Honey this year, I am informed by 3 different sources bee keepers etc has been in abundance this year!
If bees are happy and doing that, then we as humans are still safe.
Reason I know is because we sell large containers with lids, and there’s been a lot sold lately too!

As for eating honey, they say if you buy and consume locally produced honey, it eliminates any allergies in the area you might otherwise have.

There is a difference in taste and colour etc
We recently stopped in at Peninsula Honey place and were able to taste test many and did taste the differences.

I bought a big bucket of honey today. Just undifferentiated “wildflower honey” I guess. With other honey, 5Kg of frozen raspberries, two bottles of “Cherry Syrup” and a small tin of leatherwood honey I plan three meads.

Two melomels, one raspberry and one cherry. There is sugar in the cherry syrup, hopefully won’t detract too much from the taste.

One straight or “show” mead featuring the leatherwood honey. This might be a small batch, 5L.

Going to make another batch of apple butter and, assuming I can find 20L of apple juice I will make a batch of Apple Butter Cyser. A cyser is a mead flavored with apples/apple juice/apple cider.

Recipe for Apple Butter Cyser http://www.skotrat.com/skotrat/recipes/mead/recipes/5.html

Apple Butter—delicious! It is basically apple sauce boiled down until it has the consistency of soft butter (there is no dairy in apple butter, just apple and spices—add LOTS of spices just don’t add LOTS of nutmeg and LOTS of mace, toxic!

What is apple butter good for apart from mead? Delicious on toast, really dresses up a bowl of porridge, better than apple sauce on pork, in a layer cake make one layer apple butter, spread on top of strong tasting cheese on a cheese board etc etc.

Recipe for apple butter: well, can’t find any decent one. Easiest is: take 3-5Kg apples, wash, destem, cut into eights and add to preserving pan with peels, cores etc (we want the pectin.) Barely cover with water or applejuice, apply heat and boil until the apples are collapsed. Run through a food mill, discard the peels etc. The fruit pulp is best cooked in a slow cooker.

Apple butter should be spiced: stick or 2 of cinnamon, 12 cloves, cardamom, nutmeg or mace or bit of each, allspice, juniper berries etc. Grind them and add them to the apple mass in the slowcooker.

Put slowcooker on high and cook for 10 hours. The apple butter is ready when it mounds up on a teaspoon and does not have a ring of moisture around it when a spoonful is put on a chilled saucer.

Fill into jars, seal, 10 mins in waterbath etc.

VERY worth it. Try a mix of apples:

Cooking apples: Granny Smiths, Bramleys Seedling, Jonathan

Eating apples: try and find some old varieties, look in farmers markets, greengrocers etc etc. Todays apples are varieties with little flavor but can be transported and stored no problem, nah!

Juicing varieties like King David, Golden Harvey etc.