108 Bee Hives

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Edgar

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A local honey farm puts bee hives in my property every year for Chinese Tallow nectar & I have a lot of Chinese Tallow trees. They usually bring about 64 hives, but this year they brought 108. I suppose the bees really like my trees. These boxes will all be stacked about 6' high once the nectar really gets flowing.

The honey company gets a lot of honey, the bees do their thing for the global food supply, and I get a case of honey & an ag exemption on my property taxes. It's win-win all around.
 

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RangeRat

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That's prerty cool. Can't complain about free honey and saved money! I kept bees for about 5 years and started having increased reactions to the stings, so had to move on to other hobbies…..like pen turning. 😁
 

mark james

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That's a lot of hives :eek:. I'm glad to see this as what I have read about the bee population has not been positive. Good for you Edgar!
 

JohnU

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That's really cool! I have memories as a young boy at my great grandfathers house, who kept bees, always being told to stay away from the hives. I always found them very interesting… but not enough to actually do it. I'll stick to just eating the honey. 😋
 

Edgar

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That`s a sweet deal ! Does the Chinese tallow honey have a unique taste ?
It does - actually all honey made from a prominent flower has a unique taste. It's interesting to go to a bee keeper conference and get to taste a number of different types of honey.

A lot of the very light, similar tasting honey that you find in stores are very watered down & treated to have a consistent taste. Best honey is pure honey, regardless of the flowers the bees used.

Chinese Tallow honey is fairly dark in color and the sweetness is rather subdued. I like to use it on my toast & in cereals like cream of wheat.

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Edgar

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SO how long before you start selling us your honey, Edgar? :)
I don't sell any 🙂

We get a case with 12 24-oz bottles of honey each year. We use 2-3 bottles per year & we give the rest to family & friends as Christmas presents.

Stroope Honey Farms sells their honey through various outlets, including HEB & Kroger. You can also find it on Amazon.

They have about 10,000 hives (maybe more) and move them around the country at different times of the year to help pollinate local crops. Ironically, the bees don't produce enough honey to make extraction commercially viable at any of those other locations. Almond pollination in CA is a big one.

Here's a link about their products:

 
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Didn't know the trees flowered enough for bees to be interested.... My dad lived in Groesbeck and had a Tallow tree at the corner of his car port.... on a visit he pulled a handful of berries off the tree and told me to plant them.... Back home in Humble (Yes there really an Humble Texas)... I planted them in an old wash tub on the back patio... they sprouted and I planted them in a row across the back of my lot... on the HL&P easement... last I saw them they were about 8 ft tall. Still don't remember them having flowers.

Here in Tennessee the big thing is Sourwood Honey.
 

Edgar

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Didn't know the trees flowered enough for bees to be interested.... My dad lived in Groesbeck and had a Tallow tree at the corner of his car port.... on a visit he pulled a handful of berries off the tree and told me to plant them.... Back home in Humble (Yes there really an Humble Texas)... I planted them in an old wash tub on the back patio... they sprouted and I planted them in a row across the back of my lot... on the HL&P easement... last I saw them they were about 8 ft tall. Still don't remember them having flowers.

Here in Tennessee the big thing is Sourwood Honey.
Chinese Tallow flowers aren't particularly showy, but they produce a lot of them on dangly spikes like this that are up to 8" long. They are a yellow-green color, so you pretty much only see them when you're close to the tree. They start producing flowers as early as Feb and continue through May or June.

I wasn't aware that they are highly prized for bees until a beekeeper approached me about putting some hives on our property about 40 years ago. They are fast growing & invasive, and I always thought they were just a nuisance trash tree up until then.

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