Honey Harvest 2012

We are like the Olympics here Among the Hills (.com!).  With much pomp and circumstance, we harvested the honey so laboriously produced by my bees.  I use both my English and my French when I work the bees and I always win gold…liquid gold!  Emily’s Dad helped me harvest about half of the frames of honey and then I got the other half on Sunday morning.  Usually pulling the honey off of the hives is a hot, hard, stressful job.  Beesuits are made of heavy cotton and we usually seem to time the harvest for the hottest day in August.  The bees are rarely happy about having their stash removed and honey is heavy.  This year was a little different…it wasn’t hot.  Not very hot anyhow.  Honestly, it really is hot and hard work but this year was probably the best and easiest honey-pull I have ever done!

Close-up of a frame of capped honey
Close-up of a frame of capped honey
Light and dark honey still in the frame
Light and dark honey still in the frame

 

Some of the honey harvest, waiting to be extracted
Some of the honey harvest, waiting to be extracted
uncapping a frame of honey 
Click above for videos of how we remove the cappings from the honey.  

Sunday afternoon Emily’s grandparents helped Emily, Abigail and me extract 2/3 of the honey.  Extracting honey involves a good bit of work and it is quite sticky but the benefits are awesome!  This year’s honey tastes better than any honey I have ever harvested!

Helping with the honey harvest Helping with the honey harvest

I am not sure what nectar sources the bees found out at the property (I can call it a farm now…we did agriculture out there!), but besides the awesome taste, most of the honey is as black as coffee.  We actually got two different colors of honey but the dark sort of intrigues me.  It’s unlike any honey we have ever gotten!

My very dark honey harvest!
My very dark honey harvest!

Anyhow, we took a bunch of pics and a few videos of the extraction process.  It’s hard to get pics of that part of the process when we pull the honey from the hives.  As you might guess, my mind is focused on other things.  You will have to imagine that part.  Anyhow, aside from being exhausted, it is fantastic to spend time with family, working together.  For me, that is the real gold medal for me!

10 thoughts on “Honey Harvest 2012

  1. It will cost you mom! I think it is the best honey I have ever eaten. I am certain that moving the bees up to the farm was the best thing ever!!!

  2. I bought some dark honey once from a local bee keeper and he said it was from sorgum… It was almost black, but was full of flavor.
    btw. honey that smells/tastes minty could be from ivy…

  3. Archer – Mostly the folks where the hives are grow veggie gardens so I think this must be from trees but who knows! I just hope it keeps on coming! I have never heard of the mint coming from ivy. I wouldn’t be surprised though esp when the bees were in the city where ivies abound!

  4. Beautiful honey! I’m glad it tastes good for you and all your customers. I once had dark honey and it had a bitter aftertaste.

  5. We are in Greenbrier Co WV. We harvested dark honey in early June, which is the best we have ever tasted. I thought it had a carmal taste to it. It was primarily from the Tulip Tree from in late spring. The state bee guy at the state fair said that the spring Tulip flow had been the best in years. We harvested again in August and that was much lighter and more of a usual homey taste. We used that for our mead because of the lighter taste.

  6. Hey Evey – I have had what I call tulip poplar honey before and it has a reddish, but very dark color. This year, though, I kid you not, it is as dark as used motor oil. I suspect that it is still tulip poplar but it is still very different than most years. What really matters though, is that it tastes awesome! Here’s hoping for another year of that!

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