At 08:20 AM 9/21/98 -0400, you wrote:
>Judy (A.K.A Dave Gaida) asks about a smell coming from a hive.
 
>Judy, the best description I ever heard of Goldenrod nectar is that it
> smells like old sneakers .
 
Years ago a local farmer went into the mint oil business and planted
several hundred acres of mint. When it started to bloom I moved in a truck
load of bee hives, maybe 120 hives. It really looked good so I just could
not wait to see the results so I returned to have a peek several days
later. It was really exciting even before I got out of the truck I could
see judging by the flight that the bees were into it. As soon as I got out
of the truck I detected the odor of AFB and started to check to see what I
could find. It was not long before I found that every hive I opened smelled
like they were rotten with AFB but had none and in fact they were in a very
good honey flow and had just about filled the combs with nectar.
 
Several weeks later after a trip to add supers and one to raise up the full
honey supers I returned to take off a very nice crop of mint honey and was
happy to see the mint had been harvested and was starting to bloom again.
At the time I was extracting the honey from the bees in that area at
someone else's honey house and I extracted it. The honey had a brown cast
to its color and did have a odor that I never got used too and also had a
different taste that was not bad, or at least one you could get used too. I
was happy to sell it and the price was not that good.
 
The interesting part of this story is that the odor stayed in that honey
house for years, its gone now but for years you could walk in and not help
to think someone was extracting honey from AFB hives. I never did ask the
owner if I could use it again and I would not have been surprised if  he
would have wanted to double the rent.
 
ttul, the OLd Drone
 
50,000 supers lost to fire!
http://beenet.com/bnews.htm
 
(c)Permission is given to copy this document
in any form, or to print for any use.
 
(w)OPINIONS are not necessarily facts. USE  AT OWN RISK!