-> Does anyone have any similar experiences with off tasting honey?

In Missouri we try not to produce "Smartweed honey". Not a bad tasting honey
but what a smell. Most packers will reject honey with a high amount of
smartweed. I sold a load to a bakery once and had to take the honey back.
smartweed is in the same family as buckwheat and can be as dark in color.

At one time I had several drums with no market so I bottled for the lovers
of dark foul tasting and smelling honey. Soon all the drums were gone and I
have a few customers which still ask for the honey. I personally can't stand
the smartweed honey.

Smartweed honey is very very slow to crystallize. Sit in an unheated area 
and
might be clear for 4-5 years.( similar to Tupelo). Smartweed is an excellent
honey to winter bees on. I move bees down into the Blackwater River bottoms
in central Missouri in years when the bottoms have flooded . The plant
resembles wheat but most is pink in color in Missouri but I do see small
areas of a white variety.
The bees swarm the smartweed in fall *in my opinion* more than any other
Missouri fall plant and whatever time of day when bees are flying the bees
are visiting the plant. The area I go this year had around a 1000 acres of
smartweed. When the wind was blowing it looked like a pink carpet gently
flowing similar to what the plains of Kansas or Wyoming look like only pink
in color.

In the book American honey Plants Frank Pellett lists Smartweed as the first
*slang* name for Heartsease (Polygonum) but there are others such as:
knotweed, doorweed, persicaria, lady;s Thumb, water pepper,

If you read the reports from the old days you get reports which differ on
the darkness , flavor & smell. As a beekeeper keeping bees in areas of
smartweed I can say in its pure form smartweed is barely a bakery grade
*but* the bees love the plant and thrive on the plant.

Most commercial beekeepers reading which keep bees in areas of smartweed
would I think be highly suspect of a few of the reports in books ( Honey
Plants of North America for one) of a "water white" honey bees collected
from smartweed. I used to help unload drums of honey for a packer (before he
purchased a forklift). In fact he got his start packing honey because
myself and Bell Hill Honey fronted him the drums to go into business. He was
a kid at the time and we did the loan on a handshake and the kid paid every
cent back. Bob Adee (Richards brother) would bring a semi load down from the
Dakota's (after the packer became larger than we could supply) and after
unloading the semi we would at times set several drums back on the truck for
return to Richard. Smartweed honey was the reason. Bob Adee said smartweed
honey tainting clover in the Dakotas can be a problem in certain wet years.
Both the owner of Bell Hill Honey and myself miss the talks we had each trip
with Bob Adee when Bob brought the honey down for our local packer.
Not a kid now the packer we helped I imagine sells in around 200 stores
(including Wal-Mart) and services accounts in several states. He only buys
and sells U.S. honey for now. He tries to repay us by letting us buy
containers by the pallet when he buys a semi load at a time. I think he
knows he might not be at the place he is today if not for a couple old
commercial beekeeper geezers and his Grand Pa.( which stepped in later when
he saw the kid was willing to spend the hours needed to make the operation
work and help finance a $100,000 bottling line).

bob

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