On Sat, Dec 29, 2012 at 2:39 PM, Peter Prodger
<[log in to unmask]>wrote:

> My daughter-in-law has worked several stints in south Uganda and brought
> home a jar of "wild bush honey" It tastes exactly as described in the
> previous post. Un-eatable.
>

The honey hunters I have worked with in the Philippines (apis dorsata) do
not kill the bees or burn them.  They do use enough smoke to make them
abscond the hive, but some beekeepers use a considerable amount of smoke
taking honey of apis mellifera as well.  If the bees are africanized, as a
friend of mine describes working his hives in Surinam, they have one person
on the crew continually pumping the smoker when they are taking supers.  I
know from personal experience we used quite a bit of smoke working hives in
Venezuela and Guatemala.

The honey from the honey hunters in the Philippines has no more smoky
flavour than my honey.  It has some delightful tropical flavour (it is
mostly from the narra tree).  It does have a defect in its moisture because
the bee does not dry the honey quite as much as mellifera, as so it does
not keep as well.  I would be careful about generalizing about honey
hunters.

Stan

             ***********************************************
The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software.  For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html

Guidelines for posting to BEE-L can be found at:
http://honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm