See how clear this honey is? This is Sourwood Honey and it is highly prized for its clearness, wonderful exotic taste and care involved in stealing it from the hive.
The bees can only collect it while the trees are in bloom. The Bee keeper then has to be very careful to only collect this clear delicate nectar. 
The trees are mid sized and not in great numbers throughout the forests that run from Pennsylvania to Georgia. The best honey is collected in higher elevations and bumper crops only occur every 5 to 7 years. The season of flowering is from June till August and great care is needed to not allow clover and other flavors to spoil the product.
The flavor like the clarity of the honey is light and has an unique taste that makes it prized by all who are able to collect or buy it. The taste is slightly spicy with a hint of anise and has an aftertaste somewhat like gingerbread.
This is my Uncle Cleo when he was still alive and keeping bees. His Sourwood Honey was a prized product to all who knew him and his bees here on the Cumberland Plateau. We loved him as a sweet gentle spirit who had a magic touch with bees and wonderfully with little children. No child, family or stranger got near him without reaching out to be held by him. All us cousins were mad about him and his kind spirit and willingness to pay attention to us. Uncle Cleo was such an angel spoken of in the following quote I'm sure.Most honey is made by bees. But Sourwood is made by bees and angels.
Carson Brewer
6 comments:
Cleo used his Sourwood honey to overcome the effects of taking too much insulin for his diabetics. Seemed to work every time. I would sure love to have some of his honey once again. He is missed.
I got all teared up reading that and seeing his photo. What a special guy he was. There are several generations of people walking around this earth with a soft spot for that gentle beekeeper.
Socratease, aka Flutemaker and Aisling, I teared up writing about how dear Uncle Cleo was to all of us. I can only hope other people who didn't know him have someone in their lives as precious to them as he was to us.
Hi there! What an intriguing post! Is this an evergreen tree? If so, I think I have one in my back yard! It has identical white blossoms, same glossy leaves, only a little darker green.
The beez love the blossoms on that tree, the birds love the dark berries that form afterward.
I'd love to think it is the same kind of tree. My second cousin Marvin is an old woodsman, and with all his expertise he could not name what that kind of tree it is. (grin)
PS I wanted to tell you how much I enjoyed reading of your gentle beekeeper. I'm so sorry you have lost him. ((hugs))
Here is an address from How things Work that tells about this special tree. It may help you decide if someone brought it from this side of the Mississippi to your back yard. The only thing is, it is not an evergreen. It's leaves are long and in the fall they turn a deep burgany.
http://home.howstuffworks.com/sourwood-tree.htm
Thank you for your kind condolences about our sweet uncle.
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