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Date: | Sat, 9 Jan 2021 11:15:22 -0700 |
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"When using pollen counts to determine the nectar sources of a honey
sample, we recognize that the types and percentages of recovered pollen
do not provide a one-to-one correlation with the true nectar sources in
the honey."
In 1984, I was working with a Commercial operation in the Alberta Peace
region. In mid August we had the opportunity to place hives from their
early summer sets onto nearly a section of 2nd year red clover being
held for seed. Some years this produces extremely well and others, not
enough to pay for the moves. We had a beautiful September that season
and took 2 good pulls off them. At the same time, next to our clover
field was about a 20 acre summer fallow field of volunteer canola. The
plants weren't thick, but close enough to give it a slight yellow hue.
There were also scattered canola plants along the ditch of the municipal
road bordering one side of both fields. That accounted for all the
agriculture land available to those bees. The rest was river and bush.
At the time Japan and Germany were both huge premium markets for
Canadian clover honey. When we went to sell in November that year, the
honey hadn't liquefied in the barrels, a sure sign of it's quality. At
the time, brokers and buyers had really started to rely on pollen
testing to determine floral source, but we weren't worried. You could
have knocked us over with a feather when different ones we were offering
it to, advised us (some not too politely) that it was anywhere from 70
to 90% canola. One German company was sure that worse yet it, was from
Rapeseed. There hadn't been enough Canola plants available to those
hives to produce 5% of that honey. We finally moved it in June (still
mostly liquid) to a Canadian packer in Vancouver, who looked at, tasted
it and packed it as Pure Clover; some of the best, he said, he'd ever
seen. That was my lesson as to how accurate pollen testing was (not)
for determining nectar source.
Dave Tharle
Ardmore, AB
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