Bill writes:

>[honeydew] does taste good.

Much better than buckwheat honey according to my taste buds.

>But that same mineral content can be bad for bees, especially
oeverwintering bees.

As I well know! Last summer one of my hives refilled their top super with
honeydew right after I had extracted. Knowing the conventional wisdom on
trying to overwinter with honeydew, I decided to see for myself if it was
as bad as claimed. It was. The bees survived up until about the first of
January and the inside of the hive was a mess. It had the smell of a barn.

This spring the unconsumed honeydew was fed to a new package of hived bees.
They seemed to build up ok and went on to make as much honey as those
started on sugar syrup. But, of course, they had the ability to do
cleansing flights which those overwintering bees generally could not.

Regards,
Dick