Just metres from my back fence as I was throwing the ball for the dog I noticed a familiar looking flower with a dozen or so bees on it. Anyone guess what it is?
Hint, it’s not a great friend to the Flowhive system.
Hi Alan, 
it’s a Leptospermum species, going by the flowers. Not a friend to the flowhive system, prettywell sums it up. Did we speak since last Wednesday? I found some jellybush honey in the doctor’s hives that wouldn’t spin out. Not enough to cut the comb out, however enough to scoop out a nice jar as a gift to a lady who has all her own teeth & enjoys chewing the wax to get the honey out. Wax sticks to my false teeth something chronic.
She really loves the flavor, despite recently beeing told that jellybush honey tastes horrible. We had 3 different flavors that she tried & she relished all of them.
1 Like
Yes Jeff. I like it too although I don’t bother chewing the honeycomb. Never saw the point. Only one of my hives out of the three ever get it in the hive. The original one funny enough. No rain at our place last night. Was looking forward to a good drenching around the neighborhood.
1 Like
That looks like Geraldton Wax that we had in our garden when I was a youngster. We had the pink one and it smelled like ice-cream as I recall.
1 Like
Although Gero wax looks the same it is a different genus to the tea trees.
More likely a tea tree due to the clue given.
Question. Is jelly bush a particular leptospermum or does the term refer to all tea trees? Are all tea tree honeys thixotropic?
Hey Skeggs,
In short no and no as I understand it. I remember reading/hearing that there are some 80 odd species/varieties of Leptospermum in Australia. My guess is Jelly bush is simply a term applied to any of those species that produce thixotropic honey. I am almost certain that not all of them produce thixotropic honey.
Perhaps someone can correct me if I’m wrong.
No rain here either, just a few spits. Ah well, I guess we had a 40% chance of getting none.
I just spooned the honey & wax (new wax) away from the foundation, leaving that intact, in the areas where the honey stayed put. The lady got a mixture of honey & wax.
Ooops… I have just put a bunch of hives in a valley just because of this flower. Hehe… am sort of looking forward to Jellybush. Its a lot of work and not good for the Flow hive but its unique flavour and properties have made it highly desirable.
2 Likes
Wow! That one is full on. Good luck with that lot Rodderick. Now that I found the one bush I searched out for more and they’re all the place in the reserve behind my house. Might put some standard frames around.
1 Like
Good idea, I have put stickies in my hives in preparation and will exchange for new frames when the leptospermum has finished… If you get to the honey early enough you should be able to extract out OK, I have wax press as a backup plan… Just in case… 
Pardon my ignorance, but what does “thixotropic” mean? It’s not in my dictionary!
1 Like
It is a curious property of non-Newtonian liquids such as tomato ketchup, heather honey and jellybush honey. 
Basically it means that the liquid is thick and almost gel-like until you shake or vigorously stir it, at which point it will flow. Here is some information in more detail:
3 Likes
That was a great read, my friend. I must admit I had only surmised the first “jelly” part of the properties of thixotropic honey based on its nickname, never bothering to look up the word. Decades of dinner table anticipation finally explained 
!!
Now please enjoy this fresh-from-the rabbit hole, genius new application for the already famously versatile and familiarly thixotropic old plaything Silly Putty 
2 Likes
Ooops, I think that is actually anti-thixotropic, or rheopectic! 
I have the feeling that you love cooking, so you have probably stirred cornstarch into water. If you don’t use enough water, when you try to mix it, it is like set cement, but when you stop stirring, it flows freely. Fascinating stuff. If you dare, and you can make enough volume, you can actually run across the top of a tank of the stuff - it behaves like a bouncy solid. That is anti-thixotropic or rheopectic behavior. Used to take me 30 minutes to make English custard as a kid, as I wanted to play with the cornflour (cornstarch) mixture first.
2 Likes
Oops, indeed - let’s split the difference and say non-Newtonian 
I do love to cook! Was never a great student of math & science in school - learned much faster through cooking (and waiting tables).