Maple Flavered Honey
Has any one ever tried this. My brother and I have been considering buying some land in upstate NY and tapping maple trees into a bee house with several hives protected from the cold. It seems like so much less work than boiling all that sap down. I can see a down side to this but that has always bee my downfall.
Maple honey
It takes 8 gallons of sap to make 1 gallon of syrup. The maple trees flow around March in that part of the world. The sap goes up the tree during the day and cold nights cause it to run back down into the roots overnight. Bees that I have fed do not feed to the point of hundreds of gallons of feed. The number of hives needed to make much honey/syrup would be incredible. The bee population is low at that time of year which would not help. The temperature would not help much with evaporation. I am not sure if the sap has enough sugar in it to get the bees to feed. It is really weak as it comes out of the tree. When I made syrup if the sap froze in the collection bucket when I went out in the morning sometimes I would take a sip of the more sugary water that had not frozen this was sweeter but not that sweet. Give it a try and let us know exactly why maple flavored honey does not work or if it does
I've never seen bees boil down sap.
It takes 40 gallons of sap boiled down to get one gallon of finished syrup. On the other hand, nectar varies widely in amounts of sugar content - from as low as 8% to as high as 50% on phloem-derived vascular tissues.
They are going to need a gigantic evaporator to get the sugar out of the sap.
MM
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