Honey

We have 2009 honey available; $12 for a quart size jar (about 3 pounds).

Our bees have not been treated with any chemicals or antibiotics to combat mites or other bee problems. When extracting honey from the combs, we do not heat the honey at all - it takes longer to strain, but that's fine. The honey has never been warmer than in the beehive! So all the enzymes and natural qualities of the honey are fully present.

The bees visit all around the property and the neighborhood, collecting from the flowers and pollinating our fruits. It takes 1 million flower visits to make a pound of honey!

Beekeeping

We started keeping bees in 2005, and we are still rather new to this. Two hives came north with us but haven't got the care that they should with everything else going on.

This is how we started.

Dad assembled and painted base, hives and top, and made a little table for the hives to sit on. The bees themselves arrived in the mail (our postman is quite understanding), in the small box you see. 3 pounds of bees is tens of thousands of individuals.



It was quite exciting to get the bees into the hive. You dump the bees in, and carefully hang the queen in her little box inside the hive

 


From time to time during the summer, I inspect the hive to make sure the queen was there and doing her job of producing baby bees.



In September, we harvest the honey. The bees don't like this very much; there's a lot of angry buzzing for a few weeks, and don't get too close to the hive. They eventually get over it.

It's a difficult, very, very messy job to extract honey with the mechnical extractor; it has to be done inside since the anyplace outside we'd encounter the resentful rightful owners.

last updated: 1/26/10