Like Alberta Dave, I have never collected any reddish alfalfa honey as described by Idaho Dave. It must be produced by conditions specific to Idaho.

I am in dry country and get honey from irrigated alfalfa fields. There is volunteer alfalfa here and there that also produces honey on wet years. We are having a very wet summer this year, four inches of rain in May, another couple in June, another two in July, but no real heat yet. Most days it has trouble getting above 20C with cold nights down below 10C. This has made for a mediocre honey crop so far but there is still lots of potential for a good crop if we can get a week of 30C.

Some years my honey granulates as Dave Tharle describes but other years it remains liquid for six months or more. My theory is that this coincides with years when there is a lot of volunteer sweet clover blooming - but I have never done a pollen analysis.

One year I extracted honey that could have passed for fireweed (Epilobium angustifolium) honey. Turned out the rancher had planted a variety of vetch. The vetch looked a lot like alfalfa but the honey was absolutely clear, very mild in flavour and didn't granulate. It was what you'd call 'water white', although that seems like a strange term to me. If the water part refers to clarity and the white part refers to colour then shouldn't we refer to amber and dark honey as opaque, cloudy or milky. Water White Honey. Milky Amber honey. Crude Oil Dark Honey. Makes sense to me.   

The most unusual honey I've come across was in Australia. Trevor W. may have to correct me on this but I think it was from the Stringybark tree. It was the most viscous honey I've ever encountered. On a hot day you could back ten feet or more away from the hive with a super of honey and still see strands of honey connected to the burr comb on the top of the hive. Getting the supers on the truck was a sticky job. Stickier than normal I mean. The stringy bark tree does have stringy bark so I guess it makes sense that the honey is stringy too. 

Central B.C. Ted 

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