September – A Sweet Surprise

Jeanne at No Rhyme or Reason Farm Beekeeping, Chester County, Homestead, Uncategorized

We’ve had bees for three years now. The first year – we got nothing, the second year – we got next to nothing (6 pounds of honey), the third year – we thought we got nothing. The beekeepers association said that if you don’t have honey by the end of July – you aren’t getting any, so pack up your hopes and dreams and wait another year. But… our bees are just late bloomers. They waited until mid August and in the span of about two weeks brought home nearly 70 pounds of dark, sweet honey.

We had used the extracting equipment last year – hardly worth the effort, but I guess it was a good “dry run” to process the amazing 6 pounds of honey. This year, we at least had a process in place and set to work early in the morning. Several hours later – we have CASES of the stuff. In fact, I need to go buy more honey jars! I guess that’s a good problem to have.

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We had three shallow supers of frames to extract.
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And they were packed to the corners with honey.
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I got stung by a yellow jacket earlier in the week so I was taking NO chances. I don’t mind helping but those few bees that came in with the frames of honey weren’t going to get to me!
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Straining the honey from the extractor to a bucket. We ended up with a full five gallon bucket plus a little more!
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The “fruits” of Chris’s persistence. He took classes, kept doing everything he was supposed to do – and here we are – with nearly six CASES of honey.

7 thoughts on “September – A Sweet Surprise”

    • Hi Lizanne – We are so excited to get it – that we haven’t really thought about getting rid of it! Maybe we’ll put a honey for sale sign out at the end of the driveway and sell it from our porch. Probably by the time I give jars to neighbors (for the inconvenience of the bees) and cousins (for Christmas) and have it in my hot tea now that the weather seems to have turned on us – we probably won’t have much left. We’re just excited to have success this year!

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    • Actually, there have been stings – but yellow jacket stings – not honey bee stings. Oh, and spider bites and mosquito bites. And, then the poison ivy. Sometimes it makes me wonder why I want this “country life.” And then there is the honey… maybe that’s one reason why.

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