This is oilseed rape, the main crop growing around us this year. This rogue plant popped up conveniently by a blue hoarding so the acid yellow colour really shows up and you can see that this plant is a brassica. It is farmed for the oil its seeds produce. Originally used primarily as a lubricant, modern oilseed rape oil has been developed to be safe and palatable for human consumption and the "cake" left over after processing is used as an animal feed. It is also grown for biodiesel. We love the nutty flavour and use it a lot.
For the beekeeper, the most noteworthy property of oilseed rape is how quickly honey made from it crystallises. It has to be extracted even before the bees have sealed it over with wax otherwise it doesn't spin out. I learnt from experience last year that oilseed rape honey left in the frames is even hard for bees to use once it's set. Hence, this week we extracted the first honey of the season. At the out apiary, the Sue Bees are just a few feet from a large field of oilseed rape. On Monday Dad extracted 18lb of honey, a record for us from a single super (the box of frames where the bees only store honey as opposed to the larger brood chamber box where they have the nest and honey and pollen stores).
At the weekend, we extracted about 24lb from 2 supers on the Rubettes. We don't know exactly how much honey there is because we ran out of jars after 14lb and the rest is sitting in a honey bucket.
Normally, we simply double filter our honey: we don't heat treat it or blend it. We had no choice but to use the honey bucket, however, the likelihood is that the honey will crystallise before we get more honey jars so we will probably have to heat the honey to get it out of the bucket.
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