July 31, 2015 · last week, we had 30 bottles of honey, fresh from our hives. This week, we're down to ten! Now I see how beekeepers sell out so quickly and harvest is typically only once per year! We might get a second harvest off of ours, but we can't make any promises. #JustPlainWow
August 14·down to our last tiny jar of honey! I cannot believe how fast we sold out, but then again, we didn't plan to have any this year. #DaughterOfTheCovenant#EnjoyingThePromisedLand!
ML: After getting honey from you, I need to ask about future supply. I know that you can't just keep taking honey from the bees. It is supposed to be a hard winter, so, you will need to have enough to make it through a possibly cold spring.
Me: sing with me, "One day at a time, Sweet Jesus..." that's all the info I have. They typically need 10 frames per hive to survive our winters. We will check on them in a couple of weeks to see how they are doing but won't know for sure how much we'll have until they stop producing, around the same time as the first killer frost. I *think* and hope we'll get more this year, but there's still too many variables. They can also have sugar water as a food source, but it's a fine art to know when to feed it and when not to.
CS: When I come in October I am hoping to get honey from you!
Me: Hoping we have some! right now the girls have an extra 40 frames to build up and i believe that joe is planning to add more. They can build up about ten frames, every three weeks, if the conditions are right. I'm hoping the squash field in front of them has started to bloom - will likely check that today. We might also get a chance to check the hives this weekend, will keep everyone posted! :) It only took six frames to get 27 lbs of honey, so there's definitely some good potential! :)
Me (Aug. 15): We checked on the girls today but it's still hard to know without taking the hives further apart, which we didn't want to do today. The squash has been blooming a couple of days, as we can tell by the sudden presence of fruit! There's still a lot of bloom buds to go, though and certainly no chance of frost in this heat!
Pictured is some of our beautiful Norfolk County honey, still in the frame, some capped and some uncapped. I took this picture, August, 2017, which was followed by some comments:
KB: Beautiful frame of honey! Looks like the girls are lovin' the wax foundation Me: Joe's totally done with plastic, hated it before the girls had a chance to offer their opinions. It seems they hate it too
HZ: Yummy Yummy Yummy
KH: Yum. Looks good. Makes me wish I could eat sugar!