I'm quite sure there is nothing more fun than layering on long britches, long sleeves, jackets, elbow length gloves and a big hat when it's 94 degrees with 85% humidity. The reward at the end though makes up for it. Mostly.
Stella and I extracted honey yesterday. Her tiny late summer swarm that I was sadly pretty sure wouldn't even make it through the winter has produced almost three gallons of honey already. From one shallow super. I had a medium (larger) super left from the fall and it didn't quite fill two gallons. Her bees filled every square inch of their honey frames. Mine were apparently watching too much tv.
To better illustrate this, imagine we each had two boxes of half-pint jars. My bees almost exactly filled the two boxes (24 jars). Stella's hard working bees filled her 24 jars, plus all the big jars in the above picture.
If you look carefully at the two small jars, can you see one is slightly darker? That's the fall honey - mostly summer wildflowers. Stella's early spring honey is lighter - probably a lot of honey locust. They are just now starting to work all the white clover. It will be interesting to see what that honey looks (and tastes) like. Yep, they all taste different.
So we are hoping everyone stays busy this summer and fills several more boxes for us. The (free loading) Frog Pond Honey Factory has joined forces with Stella's hives on the hill to become Too Busy Bees. Janbaby came up with the idea for our logo...but I haven't had time to sketch it out yet.
That's the thing about being too busy ;-).
Stella and I extracted honey yesterday. Her tiny late summer swarm that I was sadly pretty sure wouldn't even make it through the winter has produced almost three gallons of honey already. From one shallow super. I had a medium (larger) super left from the fall and it didn't quite fill two gallons. Her bees filled every square inch of their honey frames. Mine were apparently watching too much tv.
To better illustrate this, imagine we each had two boxes of half-pint jars. My bees almost exactly filled the two boxes (24 jars). Stella's hard working bees filled her 24 jars, plus all the big jars in the above picture.
If you look carefully at the two small jars, can you see one is slightly darker? That's the fall honey - mostly summer wildflowers. Stella's early spring honey is lighter - probably a lot of honey locust. They are just now starting to work all the white clover. It will be interesting to see what that honey looks (and tastes) like. Yep, they all taste different.
So we are hoping everyone stays busy this summer and fills several more boxes for us. The (free loading) Frog Pond Honey Factory has joined forces with Stella's hives on the hill to become Too Busy Bees. Janbaby came up with the idea for our logo...but I haven't had time to sketch it out yet.
That's the thing about being too busy ;-).
9 comments:
What fun!
Well, I'm sure suiting up and getting the honey out wasn't all that much fun, but all those lovely golden jars........
Makes me want to go to the farmers' market and get some honey!
:-)
What a beautiful sight! Putting all of the layers on in your humidity doesn't sound like fun, but the end definitely justifies the means!
What beautiful jars. The different colors are delightful to see and knowing how flowers produce different tastes and colors is really cool.
Linda
http://coloradofarmlife.wordpress.com
That is a year's supply for me; how grand!
Looks pretty yummy to me!
Delectable honey..yum!
Such beeutiful honey. I don't know of any bee keepers around here anymore (nwNC). Homemade honey is worth it's weight in gold!
Looks good! I didn't think about different colored honey from the different flows, but that makes sense! I'm looking forward to the day I can harvest my first honey!
Sure that honey will be taken care. Wish I was close by to purchase some LOCAL honey. I will settle for local from here.
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