Honey

[Pond Life]

We've been having a bit of a discussion on the Chiang Mai forum about Home Brew, one of the posters is making his own Mead from Honey. I'm told by locals that most honey for sale in 750 ml whiskey bottles is diluted with sugar syrup, for instance if you pay 100 B youre probably getting about 2/3 syrup.

What do our resident bee keepers think of this ? true not true ?

How much for a bottle of 100% pure direct from the bee keeper ?

[sbk]

Not a resident bee-keeper but a buyer of honey.

Alot of honey is diluted and if its cheap it most definitely is. Here on Koh Phangan, where all prices seem inflated compared to elsewhere, a 750 ml bottle of pure undiluted honey is 400 baht. The diluted honey now costs 200 baht a bottle since the price of sugar went up

[RamdomChances]

We usually just send a couple of the local kids out to steal a bee's nest

[Maizefarmer]

The brandname stuff you buy in the shops - nope - but the one of 750ml whiskey bottles you buy in the village markets is almost always diluted to about 15%-20% (if not more) - and you can often taste it is diluted (side by side with pure honey).

Maizefarmer

[Gary A]

My Thai wife is skeptical of all honey. She says MOST of it has cane syrup mixed with it. I know a retired Thai teacher who is now into bees in a major way. He has over two thousand hives. I'm sure what I buy from him is pure. He sells his honey to an expat Frenchman up here who exports it to Europe. I have no idea how you could check to be sure it pure but the Frenchman swears to the purity. He also sells a higher grade that comes from only lum yai tree flower blossoms. The color is different and he says the quality is much higher. Honey is honey to me and I doubt that I could tell the difference between pure and the stuff that has cane syrup added.

[Pond Life]

Thanks for the replies, keep them coming !

I've tasted what I was assured was pure honey straight from the hive & it was incredibly sweet compared to the whiskey bottle stuff.

Gary A, could you ask your teacher friend how much he would sell a bottle for localy ?

Ta

[Maizefarmer]

If it's been exported to Europe, you can be certain it's going to be pure if thats what it says on the bottle (description of goods Act, or some similar legislation - aaah legislation, legislation - for good and for bad!)

My Thai wife is skeptical of all honey. She says MOST of it has cane syrup mixed with it. I know a retired Thai teacher who is now into bees in a major way. He has over two thousand hives. I'm sure what I buy from him is pure. He sells his honey to an expat Frenchman up here who exports it to Europe. I have no idea how you could check to be sure it pure but the Frenchman swears to the purity. He also sells a higher grade that comes from only lum yai tree flower blossoms. The color is different and he says the quality is much higher. Honey is honey to me and I doubt that I could tell the difference between pure and the stuff that has cane syrup added.

[altman]

i have had the honey combs from the market and i do not like them. they seem to always have little bee embryoes in the comb and they are not very sweet.

bottled honey... i don't know but i judge a honey by how dark and how thick it is, figuring that sugar water is light in color and density. and using that it is easy to see that there are several differnt 'kinds' of honey available. i just get the darkest and thickest i can find.

[Maizefarmer]

Different sources of honey - diferent colour taste.

A lot of the honey you find in village markets in 750ml bottles comes from wild bees (not giant asian honey bee - which is almost always light in colour - and mostly, but not alaways, found down south).

A lot comes from some or other very small black bee (don;t know the scietific or Thai name). They look like flys and build small combs - often found on fences underneath trees (shade). Lots of these in the North east, and the honey is dark. Esy to tackle - my 10yr old daughter tackles them with no fear (crazy girl!)

But also, a lot of bees are not kept in hives as we do in the West. They are kept in all sorts of containers with no frames, and the honey mix could be any mix of flowers and often as much as 2 seasons old - all this makes it darker.

No, generally I don't like the market honey either. The honey I do really like is that that comes from the giant asian honey bee - but not easy to get because, firstly you have to find the nest, not many of them and they are always high up in tress (I mean high - 60 feet plus), and secondly you then have to find someone brave enough to tackle the job - and the Giant Asian Honey Bee is worse to deal with than the African Honey Bee.

They are scary - a specialist traditional job and fewer and fewer Thai's each year left to do the job.

Lovely honey, always no more than one season old, always from a fresh comb and a lovely light colour.

A lot of these nesting places are as much as 50 - 100 years old. The swarm comes back each year or 2nd year from Malaysia. Hangs around for a season and then pushes off back to Malaysia. Scientists have still to figure out how the bees find their way back to the same tree year after year decade after decade - as worker bees don't live much longer than 3 - 6months. The only bee left that could possibly know the way from one year or decade to the next would be the queen, but even when they are replaced the swarm still finds its way back to the same tree - 500 - 1000miles away.

Just how is that achieved by dumb bees - how do they pass that info on from one generation to the next ????????????????????????????????????

Go figure!

MZ

I've seen single combs that full of honey weigh over 100lbs!

MF

[old wanderer]

When I had my ranch, I bought a couple of hives with some extra frames from a neighbor. The bees had no problem being moved. After a few months I would just put on a long sleeve shirt and go out to the hives and open the top to see how they were doing, never a sting or problem.

Several times other people decided to come along and every time they got stung, one poor guy right on the lip.

I would like to have a few hives up about Saraburi on our land, just to play with a bit.

Can you purchase the the Giant Asian Honey Bee? Seems like they would keep the timid away from poaching my honey.

[Maizefarmer]

Nope - the Giant Asian Honey Bee will not adapt to a hive - it has been tried.

Even if you cover the entrance with a secluder to stop the queen getting out the hive, they will leave her behind and breed a new queen outside the box.

Secondly - they are simply to agressive. Yes - I too can get honey out of my few hives with nothing more than a bit of burning rag for smoke and no protection - but try that with a swarm of GAHB's and you are in for a shock. There are a few guys in Thailand (more in Malaysia) who know how to handle them, but otherwise, no commercial value - can't be hived and simply plain downright dangerous to handle.

MF

Edited February 22, 2007 by Maizefarmer

[sbk]

and the Giant Asian Honey Bee is worse to deal with than the African Honey Bee.

They are scary - a specialist traditional job and fewer and fewer Thai's each year left to do the job.

Sounds ominous MF!

[Ijustwannateach]

Different sources of honey - diferent colour taste.

A lot of the honey you find in village markets in 750ml bottles comes from wild bees (not giant asian honey bee - which is almost always light in colour - and mostly, but not alaways, found down south).

A lot comes from some or other very small black bee (don;t know the scietific or Thai name). They look like flys and build small combs - often found on fences underneath trees (shade). Lots of these in the North east, and the honey is dark. Esy to tackle - my 10yr old daughter tackles them with no fear (crazy girl!)

But also, a lot of bees are not kept in hives as we do in the West. They are kept in all sorts of containers with no frames, and the honey mix could be any mix of flowers and often as much as 2 seasons old - all this makes it darker.

No, generally I don't like the market honey either. The honey I do really like is that that comes from the giant asian honey bee - but not easy to get because, firstly you have to find the nest, not many of them and they are always high up in tress (I mean high - 60 feet plus), and secondly you then have to find someone brave enough to tackle the job - and the Giant Asian Honey Bee is worse to deal with than the African Honey Bee.

They are scary - a specialist traditional job and fewer and fewer Thai's each year left to do the job.

Lovely honey, always no more than one season old, always from a fresh comb and a lovely light colour.

A lot of these nesting places are as much as 50 - 100 years old. The swarm comes back each year or 2nd year from Malaysia. Hangs around for a season and then pushes off back to Malaysia. Scientists have still to figure out how the bees find their way back to the same tree year after year decade after decade - as worker bees don't live much longer than 3 - 6months. The only bee left that could possibly know the way from one year or decade to the next would be the queen, but even when they are replaced the swarm still finds its way back to the same tree - 500 - 1000miles away.

Just how is that achieved by dumb bees - how do they pass that info on from one generation to the next ????????????????????????????????????

Go figure!

MZ

I've seen single combs that full of honey weigh over 100lbs!

MF

Interesting... could be some sort of electromagnetic coding (following field lines of the Earth?), or perhaps (though more unlikely) transfer of information by a "spatial" language- it's been shown that bees "tell" each other where food sources are by a kind of dance which indicates direction and quality of the food.

[Maizefarmer]

Ijustwannateach

Indeed could be any one of those theories - but heres what gets me: the old food dance that bees do, is very much a realtime thing i.e. the bee does his dance and off his buddies go straight away.

This is different we are talking about bees from a later generation, so not only does the info have to be communicated to the next generation, they then have to retain it, pass it on to the next generation ... and on and on it goes for perhaps 3 or 4 generations before this 1000mile plus great trip takes place - and then when it takes place, its with GPS accuarcy - not only will that swarm go back to the same tree, they will also go back to the same branch!!!

We humans need high tec and satillites to do what a pigeon can do with its brain - never mind what a ###### bee can do with it's simple brain! - and while pigeons reatin the ability form generation to generation - they cannot transfer location co-oridnates from one generation to the next, which s what this bee does.

Uncanny!

MF

[sutnyod]

Know several bee farmers. Their honey is never diluted. However, they said they are very upset at the people selling wild honey (that very stuff in the whiskey bottles), because they come and want to buy honey combs to put them into the bottles for a sign of purity.

BTW, most if not all Thai bee farmers know each other. If anyone of them would dilute their honey, it would come out in the open.

Do you know some simple ways how to determine whether honey is diluted or not? First: put some honey into your hand and rub your palms together. If you experience a "sticky" sensation, this honey is not pure.

Likewise: pour a bit on toilet paper or other absorbent material. There should be no watery run-off or quickly expanding moist spot around the honey drop.

[chownah]

This link:

http://gears.tucson.ars.ag.gov/nx/malaysia/malaysia.html

has a description of one way that the honey from the giant Asian honey bee is collected:

"At last! It is 3:00am and the moon has set. Now the honey hunters have ascended the massive Tualang Tree and can begin the arduous honey hunting. Here, they have rubbed the smoldering torch bundle against the comb and have now forcefully struck it against the limb just above the bee colony they are harvesting. A firefall, a brilliant cascade of glowing embers rains down toward the ground almost like a meteor shower set against the jet-black tropical sky. This is repeated several times. Each time, we hear the roar of the giant bees as tens of thousands of them race after the glowing sparks as they drift earthward. When they reach the ground the bees are disoriented and rest on plants there. This keeps the honey hunters aloft safe from their often savage attacks. Now, they are free to collect the sweet harvest of Hitam Manis without being stung by the bees. What a sight!"

Edited February 26, 2007 by chownah

[chownah]

This link:

http://72.14.235.104/search?q=cache:JMmSnR...;cd=9&gl=th

suggests a theory on how the migrating bees know which is their old nesting site:

"These results show that migrating A.dorsata swarms are astonishingly faithful to their nest sites. Returning swarms usually have hundreds of alternative nest sites, but seem to return to the same structure or tree in preference to all others. They may even return to the same eave or branch. It is not known how they do this, but the mechanism is probably related to chemical signatures left by the departing swarm and recognized by the returning swarm."

Edited February 26, 2007 by chownah

[Nawtilus]

We just came back from a camping trip to petchaburi and along the roadside was plenty of honey...so it seemed...stopped and eveyone was sugar syrup. Very light coloured.

Wifey opened up the bottles and it smelt of whiskey. We have also had what was supposed to be homney before bought in a rush and it has gone off in the bottle, particulalry the last quarter or so.

Also a quick way to get a reasonable check, tip the bottle up and observe the thickness of the air bubble rising, the colour and then the smell.

[Vegemite]

Great subject, I love honey.

Can enyone tell me how and where to get the real thing in Thailand?

All I could find last time was supermarket bottles of sugar goo.

Will be in Bangkok and then Roi Et and Ubon in a few weeks.

Any info would be really great because the Thais dont seem to know the difference.

I am even taking some good Manuka honey to the father in law to make his medicine ( he is the local medicine man and people come from miles around for his wares. ).

All the best.