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honey, and feed the eggs. It is even possible to estimate a worker’s age simply because she expends so much energy. “You can tell the age of a worker,” says Amberson, “not just by their size but by the hair on the thorax. They get a little bald,” he laughs. Her first job is to clean out the cell that she came from, and then she becomes a field worker. She will fly around the hive to get her bearings, and will then fly off to start work.
The honey which different bees produce does not depend on the bees themselves, but rather on the plants from which they get their nectar. Bees will “establish a source, and will keep working it until it gives out," explained Amberson. In Rappahannock, dark honey is generally produced since the be. ...ive a number of different plant sources that they exhaust in a season. Every plant will produce a different tasting honey and the honey produced in Rappahannock is a blend, Amberson added.
If there is a year of exceptional flowering for a particular series as there was last year when locust trees ♦’’exploded into bloom, the honey will taste more of that blossom than anything else. The locust produces a much lighter honey. “But,” says Amberson, “You can’t say one honey is better than another; it depends on individual tastes. Once you start looking into it, you find there are many different flavors.”
Beekeeping in Rappahannock is not a commercial operation; it is more a very absorbing passion that sometimes leads to a small financial reward. It is mostly a matter of trying to recoup the investment initially made, explains Amberson. If beekeepers let neighbors know they have surplus honey, they can usually count on a number of people showing up to buy some, “but we don’t have any major method of marketing the honey in Rappahannock," says Amberson.
Successful beekeeping entails a fair amount of work for the beekeeper. According to Amberson, “If you want it to produce anything, you have to work at it like anything else.” This means observing the seasonal cycles,
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