Sourwood...The best there is.

Last Sunday, I was heading up I-40 to the top of the Cumberland Plateau, Crossville, Tennessee, to visit little brother Morris and his wife Maggie. Their place out on Highway 68 is a lovely place to visit and I'm sure to live.  I was looking forward to the visit, but not particularly to the disappointing task at hand: bringing a load of empty honey suppers back home to be treated for wax moths and put to bed for the winter.  Back in June after robbing the bees, I placed clean supers on the hives housed at Morris's farm, hoping to get the suppers filled with the best honey in the world-- Tennessee Sourwood. An old man told me one time God planted the sourwood at higher elevations so the angels wouldn't have to travel so far from heaven to get it.  After tasting it with my wife's buttermilk biscuits, I'm a believer that the old man was right; God had a hand in the placement as well as in the creation.

http://tennesseeplateau.blogspot.com/2009/07/sweet-taste-of-sourwood.html 

I had been told by experts not to expect any sourwood honey this year because of the dry summer. I was a believer there too. After having a cup of coffee, Morris and I put on our bee garb and lit our smokers. He pulled the first top while I manned the smoker.  As the top came up, the bees went down into the super to escape from the smoke. I looked down between the frames and there it was—capped honey! Not only the top super, but the two under it were full. We went on from that hive to the next and the next; all the hives were full of sourwood honey. The excitement was equal to catching a five-pound Tennessee Small Mouth on a fly rod (or how exciting I would imagine that being…I’ve never done that).Sunday was a good day. If you think about it, most days are good for beekeepers if you look real hard.  

I would like to apologize for taking so long since our last post. Funny thing though—not one person complained.

Makes you wonder…    ;)

-greg