A nearby community government funded a project for 'Beehives in every
neighborhood'. It was a small stipend with a representative giving
show and tells. This weekend I attended a small presentation which
also included the city beehive club. I got the particulars and it is
something I've always wanted to do. Anyway I'm talking with someone
about the benefits of honey and he said he personally knew of someone
who was depressed for years on medication who started drinking green
tea with honey and is now off meds and doing okay. I've mentioned
before standing in my fruit trees drinking my tea with the bees
buzzing around my noggin. Occasionally one will check the cup but too
hot.

Jim

PS The individual hives seem to be doing okay but it is the statewide
commercial hives suffering from CCD.

On Aug 5, 8:46 am, Space Cowboy ix.netcom.com> wrote:

A Georgian (ex Soviet) I have worked with has bought a small tea
garden and has hives of bees busily making honey from Camellia
sinensis flowers. As a teaman I dislike this - tea bushes should be
kept in the non flowering juvenile phase of rapid leaf production by
strict training and severe pruning - flowering bushes equals bad
husbandry and butts should be kicked.
As a businessman I see "Tea Honey" as a great product extension to my
retail range of exotic teas and just sqeezable into the self imposed
but oft confining title of "Nothing But Tea". However the European
Union has very strict import restrictions on honey and Georgia has not
yet done its homework to meet them, so as yet Georgian Tea Honey is
still on the commercial drawing board.
I'd be interested to know if anyone has seen genuine...

Nigel teacraft.com> writes:

I wonder if you could elaborate on this. Specifically, are you saying
that tea plants that are being kept for, well, filling our cups should
*never* be allowed to flower and bear fruit? And could you please say
exactly what kind of pruning and training will prevent flowering?

/Lew

Tea is my #1 passion. Honey is #2. An excellent source for new taste
are the ethnic stores. The Arabic stores use it in their pastries
like baklava so carry the different brands usually with comb and
unpasturized. Talking to the honey guys is like talking to the tea
guys. A lot of passion. One part of our state is famous for
cantaloupes, watermelons, pumpkins which you find locally but worth a
trip just for the best honey I've ever tasted. Our commercial raw
honey comes from a mountain community noted for its wild flowers. I
think the one thing that destroys the taste of tea is sweetness. So I
never add honey to tea but everything else!

Jim

PS The club told me there is a 'Johnny Appleseed' of wild hives. He
establishes hives all over the West and SouthWest. When he comes
through town he has buckets of honey he harvested for sampling.
Nothing is for sale. It is by invitation only. I'll have to suck up
to someone to get in on that treat. I'll keep you posted. The first
benchmark is setting up the hives in the Spring. The second harvest
the following September.

Dominic T. wrote:

...sweetness...

On Aug 6, 9:41 am, Space Cowboy ix.netcom.com> wrote:

...buzzz...snip...

My wife adds honey and soy milk to her tea. When I get the sniffles I
drink the teas that only taste good when you get sick. I asked the
guys about the extraction equipment I would have to buy. They said
they wrap the boxed hives in a large bag, take it to someone who does
it for a nominal charge plus part of the honey. Now I see why there
isnt more comb in honey. The centrifuge sucks the honey out of the
cells leaving the comb intact so next year the bees dont have to start
over. I want the honey with the debris since I'm use to drinking puer
and finding whatever.

Jim

PS Honey drips. No way around it. Even a honey bear looks like
Vesuvius after a while.

Dominic T. wrote:

...now honeycomb be my baby...50's lyric...