Sugar-Free Honey

I totally forgot my most favorite question of the other night. Anyone that knows me knows that I'm not the best person for hiding my emotions. I do half of my communication through facial expressions.

This woman walks up to the NCBA booth and asks: "Do you have any sugar-free honey?" I'm afraid that I gave her my "are you making fun of me" look. I tell her that no table sugar was added, but that honey is 70% fructose and glucose. There is not much getting around that. She then tells me that she found some sugar-free honey at some store for her mother. At this point I have mostly recovered (but I think it was too late) and said that I'm afraid that we don't have any of that.

I later looked up "sugar-free honey" on da google and found what I expected: imitation honey. This stuff should be condemned by all peoples. The other was this crazy plan by the Indian government to have bees in the middle of Stevia fields and then be fed the leaves instead of sugar-water after the nectar flow. I wish them luck - but I have my doubts. Honey naturally has a low glycemic index, far below sucrose, so why all the fuss.

So in terms of my own learning pains, I put a front boardman feeder on Mary's hive and started quite a storm yesterday at noon. This caused a lot of robbing and fighting . I later read from the local associations newsletter that you should avoid front feeders in the fall for this very reason - doh. The funniest part is this morning when I checked on them - they maybe drank 1/2 cup of it. I'm guessing that all of the fall nectar is far more tempting and the just decided that the 2:1 syrup is just a little too rich.