Hey, Honey

I used to have a couple of bee hives and I loved my girls. I say “girls” because it’s the females who do all the work, unless you count impregnating the queen as “work”. That’s the only job of the drones. I remember James Brown used to call himself “the hardest working man in show business” and I liked to think my bees were like that. One hive gave me 60 pounds of honey at the end of the summer. The workers let the drones hang around over the summer so there can be baby bees but in the fall, those lazy, freeloading drones are kicked out. So long, suckers. We’re not having you eat our winter food just so you can have a little fun with the queen next spring. I’m perpetually on a quest to taste different kinds of honey. Someone once brought me honey from someplace in India and another person gifted me a small jar of honey from Africa. They were each so different and both were so wonderful. I remember years ago in Florida someone gave me some orange blossom honey. I was pretty excited to try it but discovered I didn’t really love it. Buckwheat honey’s one with a big reputation and it’s good but I rarely see it so for the most part I stick with local wildflower honey. Two weeks ago I was in the central part of the state where so many orchards are and I tasted some peach blossom honey at a local fruit stand. I was in love. Yesterday at a local farmers market I bought some maple blossom honey and some fireweed honey. I used the maple blossom in my tea this morning and it was a little more overpowering than I like. I hadn’t ever had honey from bees who were drinking fireweed nectar and my memory of fireweed is that my dad had a serious ongoing war with it, as it tried to establish itself in his cranberry marsh beds. I thought of him as I smeared the byproduct of his plant nemesis on my toast and wondered if he would have appreciated the delicate, distinctive flavor. I thought it was delicious.

Fireweed photo courtesy arunas68 at Pixabay.com