[throwup238]

I’ve had raw honey straight from both domesticated and wild hives as it was collected so unless the bees themselves are adulterating it, I think I’ve got an accurate baseline for how honey is supposed to taste.

Go out and buy a good manuka or wild Himalayan honey and you’ll quickly learn how to spot the real stuff. The honey I buy isn’t meant to look like filtered golden sugar syrup so adulterating it is practically impossible. That said I buy it from ethnic grocery stores so unless you’re getting the good stuff at Trader Joes YMMV (I like their manuka)

[michaelbuckbee]

I remember an episode of Dirty Jobs where there was an old candy plant or something that bees had gotten into, and they made blue honey from the syrup that was left over in the plant.

Rare, but possibly the bees were doing a swindle.

[throwup238]

From my limited understanding almost all beekeepers give their bees sugar syrup to help them overwinter anyway so nothing stops them from supplementing their diets in the spring. It’s obviously not ideal since a lot of the other aromatics from pollen will be missing but it’s still a step up from mixing the end product with sugar syrup.

Blue honey sounds cool though.

[afandian]

Thicker 'fondant' is for winter. Thinner syrup is for spring before the nectar flow gets going. Typically over winter the colony reduces in size, and the hive is reduced down to a single "brood box".

Supers (extra boxes) are placed on the hive when the colony is producing enough honey to harvest.

In theory the supplemental sugar shouldn't get into the supers.