Floral yeasts

Wild yeasts live wherever sugar is found, usually on grape skins or in flower nectar. I am thinking about culturing some yeast from flowers.

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This article has some good info and I would try the bee dissections but I doubt I can differentiate a bee's stomach from it's liver...

I plan to use wort as a starter but am unsure how the floral yeast will do as it is clearly adapted to a different growth medium. Time will tell, I will do this when I get DME which won't be for a week or two.

What about using honey (close..) as a starter medium, then ramping over to wort?

curtis97322 said:

What about using honey (close..) as a starter medium, then ramping over to wort?

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Honey would probably be perfect. Nectar, and therefore honey, are mostly a mixture of glucose and fructose, so there would be no metabolism adjustment for the yeast in the starter.

Good idea, would I need to add some sort of nutrient to the honey/water mixture? I hear honey has no vitamins for yeast.

I'm no expert on mead making, but I don't see how a standard yeast nutrient (from homebrew supply store) would hurt.

Good, I am thinking of using honey to culture then split the batch in half. Half I will gradually add DME and throw away some of the previous solution until it is wort the other will stay as honey as inevitably some yeasts won't tolerate the malt.