Hi Ms. Member.
Pic of four honeys.
Two labeled jars are both Sourwood. The bear jar in acacia honey color 10 or white honey. The sourwood is about color 20-30 the jar far left is 2019 color 30 from my apiary.
You may have clover honey or the likes which sometimes is color 10, the lightest color, the most valuable to the consumer eye.
Taste is the best indication, however there are many simple test to determine purity: cotton burn as mentioned by Ben, skin cream, dissolving in water etc. taste is the best test to me.
Thank you Mr. Van, that is a very helpful picture. I should try the skin test using sugar syrup as a control and see if that helps me to notice any difference. I agree that taste is probably the best test, but I'm just not experienced enough tasting different honey varieties. (Before I kept bees I always bought sourwood, so I really only know what that tastes like.)
Bees usually segregate honey by flower type. I have seen honey frames with a clear line between different flower types, very distinctive color change. If your bees did have access to sugar syrup then most likely this syrup would be grouped on a frame along side natural flower honey. So the obvious question is did your frames of honey appear segregated by color contrast. Yes I realize a possibility of natural light color 10 Pure honey not being distinguished by segregation, but the odds are: on a more likely than not basis a color segregation contrast by sugar syrup with real honey.
That is good advice, and I'll pay attention to this in the future. The frames that this light stuff came from didn't have any sort of dividing line like that I could see. (I'm pretty careful about keeping different colored honeys separated when I crush and strain.) But like you said, if the honey alongside it is quite light (like sourwood), I think that would be difficult to detect, especially in a capped frame. The other challenge is the different colors of wax in the different frames, which can make a light honey look darker. I crushed and strained a frame today that I thought was too dark to be sourwood, but it turned out it was just a darker wax.
Sourwood honey has the slightest licorice flavor to me. Anybody else notice this?
That is actually a good way to describe it. I've never really thought about it like that, but it kind of does remind one of licorice. Sourwood has a VERY subtle "spicey" aftertaste like licorice.