Monday, October 13, 2014

Fall Honey Harvest 2014

It's been months since I wrote on my blog. I'm terrible. I don't know where the summer went. It went fast. Here's a quick update of what happened last month. We harvested honey from our hives. In the beginning of the season, we had high hopes and was hoping to have a big harvest of honey. We started the season with 2 hives and grew it to 4 hives by adding 2 Nucs. We had a series of problems such as some kind of poisoning killing off almost half of our bees. Plus we had a slow cool summer, with wet temperatures. We were lucky to even have any honey to harvest with these issues. We inspected the hives and pulled the super frames for harvesting.

Of the 4 hives, we only could pull 10 frames of honey. Way less than last year's harvest. Last year we pulled 18 frames in the Fall and we had less hives!.

But at least we had a harvest. Our first year we didn't have anything to harvest. So we are glad to have some honey.

It's amazing to me that these two frames of honey are from the same hive! The top one is likely from early summer and the bottom one was made recently, late summer. Just beautiful and two different taste profiles!

I love scraping the wax off the frames. It's almost therapeutic.

Can you believe how dark this honey is? Some of the frames of honey was this really deep black coffee color! Now that is rich fall honey!

And when it starts flowing, oh my gosh. It smells incredible. Like you want to dunk your head in it!
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The flow of raw harvested honey! Yum!! #honeybee #honey #beehive #beekeeper #beekeeping #brooklynbees

A quick video to demonstrate what I mean. If only there was a smell app!
After we harvested the five frames of honey and split them up between the four of us (2 beehosts & 2 beekeepers) this is what each of us ended up taking home. 1 quart & 1 pint jar. This was the saddest harvest ever! But, at least we got a harvest.
I'm going to savor every last drop of this precious drop of my local Brooklyn honey!
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1 comment:

  1. Jim DavisDecember 4, 2014 at 8:38 AM

    Great pics, Meems. Too bad about your die-out. Does sound like some kind of toxicity. Let's all keep fingers crossed for a milder winter and getting the hives through to spring.

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