Light and dark honey

[chief]

I have finally refurbished the old extractor I bought and am now getting around to extracting this summers honey. The honey I have taken off is all different colors and from two side of the state that have vastly differing nectar sources. My question is should I just extract it all together and let it mix or should I do the light colored then the dark colored from each side of the state? What are your opinions on this? Does the light or dark sell dramatically better or worse. I am trying to sell 12 lab pups at the moment and have had no problem selling the yellows but have not sold one black yet. I donÂ’t want the same problem with my honey!

[Dick Allen]

It it was me, I'd do them separately. Some people prefer the lighter colored honey and its generally milder taste. Some like the darker honey with a more robust flavor. You can have taste samples available for people to try when you sell it.

[Michael Bush]

I sell the darker for more. It's more flavorful. You usually don't get as much. People who like dark honeys love it. Pricing it higher gives all of those perceptions of higher quality and lower supply.

[Laurence Hope]

Separately. Give a choice. Give tastes. Let the customers pick. Some will like one, others will like the other.

[Tia]

I'm too lazy to do them separately. . .they all go in the extractor at once. 40 gallons later, I sold out in 2 weeks. Actually annually I sell 10 gallons of honey futures!

[size="1"][ September 30, 2006, 08:38 AM: Message edited by: Tia ][/size]

[Jeffrey Todd]

I prefer to do them separately, for a couple of reasons, even though it entails more work. First, it is interesting to customers to see the different honeys, and promotes interest in your product, and many will want to buy some of each. Secondly, occasionally bees gather nectar from a plant that produces undesirable flavors (to humans, at least) and you would not want to mix that honey with the good stuff. Here in Central Texas, we have a plant called bitterweed that produces a very unpleasant-tasting fall honey. Other fall plants produce an excellent, dark-as-molasses honey that I prefer to any other.

[tecumseh]

seperate is my choice. I find that in the market here there is a significant difference in the prefered color of the honey. I suspect a good bit of this demonstrated preferrence is determined by the type of honey individuals were exposed too when very young. the bakers ask for dark honey and the hispanic buyers seem to like it very dark.

in the end.... in regards to customers satisfaction it is always good to give them a choice.

[Matt NY]

My thought is seperate. I plan to go with all shallow supers to allow for more variety in flavors. This will probalbly be a lot more work, but I could sell it as spring, summer or fall honey or by what is in bloom and gives it the predominate flavor. I plan to charge more for it this way. I get a kick out of the label " varital wildflower." Ths just means, I don't know.

YMMV
Matt

[JohnK and Sheri]

While I like to please my retail customers, the main reason we keep the crops separate is for our wholesale buyers, who comprise most of our sales by far. They pay by color grade. The majority of our crop is light, we don't want to downgrade it by darkening it.
On the retail side, the early light crop here in Wisconsin is fairly mild and many of my customers prefer this honey, so I try to keep it separate. If they come too late in the year this will be granulated and they will find the more robust fall honey in the bottling tank. Some folks like that better and plan to visit at this time just for this honey. Some folks buy both. Folks like a choice, as Tecumseh notes.
Sheri

[johnE]

i would seperate it to serve a larger costomer base

[DroneDawg]

How do you tell the honey is light or dark before you extract? Just check a few cells on each frame? Will all the honey from one super be the same color, dark or light?