Spring is in the Air

We can feel the sun's extra 2 minutes of light and heat per day...well maybe not really at that specific of level. But the feel of spring is in the air. And the bee colonies that survived our very snowy winter are getting out and about and pooping and sipping melting snow on everyday that the temperature is above 45 degrees Fahrenheit.

Like the bees, we are excited to get back out on the land and get the farm ready for another summer of lavender and retreats and happy active bees. Lots to do once the snow finally melts to get things ship shape again...sadly most of it has to do with weeding.

Back to the mention of lavender and happy active bees. In December, we sent samples of our 2025 honey harvest to Penn State Honey and Pollen Diagnostic Lab out of curiousity. We know are Lavender Honey tastes awesome and smooth with a hint of floral on the back end, but we did not know for sure how much of that was coming from the bees' work in our lavender fields during the summer. From the lab results we just got back today -- turns out a whole lot of what we think is our awesome honey flavor from our real lavender honey is actually coming from the bees bringing back a ton of lavender pollen and nectar to the hive.

For under-represented pollen plants (less pollen collected by bees when harvesting nectar) such as lavender or coffee -- which the latter, of course, does not grow in Northern Michigan, but I would like to try coffee honey sometime -- for a honey to be considered mono-floral, meaning carrying primary taste and color and chemical characteristics from one plant such as lavender or coffee, it must contain 15% to 20% pollen from the primary plant. For moderately-represented pollen plants (more pollen collected by bees when harvesting nectar), like clovers or asters, the benchmark for mono-floral is 45%.

Our combined lavender honey samples came in at 37% lavender pollen -- with one sample at 53% (which would even meet the higher pollen standard for plants like clovers) -- and the other at 24% (which too is above the international lavender honey standard).

We sent two samples from different part of the honey processing stream to attempt to get more accurate results. I have to admit that I thought our real Lavender Honey had a lot of lavender influence, but didn't think it would be this high. While this result doesn't change our and our customers' opinion of our unique honey, it does mean we don't have to change any labels, and we now have some science to back up what our taste buds were already telling us.

Nice...and almost time to get the oil changed in the tractor and fire this farm up again for another year of DOING & BEING.