Getting ready to harvest

We get our honey via two methods. One is through commercial pollination services, which may pull as many as 15 or 20 different crops in a season. The second method is from our own bees!

In this area, we harvest only once a year. The goal is to leave 60-80 pounds of honey on the hive for the bees to winter-over on, and we take the rest. It can be a bit tricky to guestimate 60-80 pounds, simply because there is a fall honeyflow that the bees are able to collect from. Just like a standard farmer, we have to be able to judge the honey potential of the fall crop, before ever knowing what the weather will be like!

However, judging from the weight of the hives, it looks like we will be able to bring in 200-300# of honey, all from the 3 hives that survived the winter. Yippee!

The honey in this area is a wildflower honey, consisting of Black Locust, Linden, Skunkweed, Maple, Dandelion, Berry, Clover, Crabapple, Alfalfa, and whatever else is blooming within a 2-mile radius that the bees decide is tasty. So far, it has always been a light-colored honey. (Some parts of Maryland also have Tulip Poplar, which is a dark honey.)

The weather is looking good, and I hope to bring the honey harvest in before the rain that appears to be scheduled on Wednesday. Between now and then - mostly sunny skies, 80 degrees (not too hot, yet the bees will be flying).

The trick is to pull the honey off quickly, with minimal fuss to the bees. If I have to chase bees off the honey, they clue in to the fact that loose honey is moving around, and ALL the hives will try to get a piece! If the bees are in the field, I can usually get in and out quickly. Hence, a sunny day is perfect for honey collection.

To extract the honey, I scrape the "cappings wax" off the honey (the top layer of wax holding the honey in the comb.) I have a huge centrifuge that beekeepers call an "extractor" (nobody said we were creative in naming objects). The centrifuge spins the honey out against the wall of the extractor, leaving the comb in one piece. Then I return the comb to the bees, and they lick it clean.

It is said that in the time it takes bees to produce 1 pound of wax, they could have produced 7 pounds of honey. It is in both my interest and theirs to salvage the comb and give it back to them to fill again!

Anyhow, back to work for me. If you are interested in "first dibs" on our local honey, please subscribe to our email list. The signup form on our homepage is for the general list, but it will send you a link for a "local" email list. We will be notifying members of the local list first when honey from our own hive is available, before making it available to the general public. (And don't worry about spam - we do not sell, lease, or otherwise distribute our list, and we typically send out one news update and one recipe each month.)