How do we know what percentages come from what flowers?

 

As bees collect nectar from each flower the pollen present gets mixed in with the nectar and taken back to the hive where it is transfromed into honey.

 

Identifying the pollen within a honey sample can give a reasonably accurate measure of what flowers a particular honey came from.

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Our honey is harvested once a season right at the end of the main flowering season (October-January) we get some quite interesting results with a very diverse range of flower types contributing to a very tasty honey packed with all sorts of different flavours, and its different each year.

 

 

How is it done

Firstly a sample is taken from our whole season’s harvest, which get's stirred overnight to ensure an accurate representation of the whole batch.

 

Firstly a 10g honey sample is prepared to better show the pollen grains under a microscope, then a pollenologyst (pollen identifying guru) from Massey University (Kat Holt) sits down to her microscope and identifies everything within the 10g sample

 

Pollen grains are amazingly different when looked at through a microscope, if the plant species are closely related then it does get quite difficult to tell them apart, but on a whole it is a fairly accurate way to find out what the bees have been out there gathering.

 

 for example rata/pohutakawa and manuka/kanuka are very similar....