08/23/2024
I know we’ve been quiet lately, but never fear, we’re still here and gearing up for the fall harvest! 🐝 (Late Sept/Oct if you’re curious 🙂)
To help pass the time while we’re all anxiously awaiting the next big honey harvest, we thought this might be the perfect opportunity to answer all your bee and honey related questions! Over the next few weeks we’ll try to address some of the most common questions we get asked, as well as answer any you might have that we haven’t thought of. We’re not experts of course, but we’ll do our best!
For today, we’ll talk about a question that comes up frequently- Why do you only have honey twice a year? Aren’t the bees making it all the time?
And the answer is kind of ….involved! Short answer: Yes, they are absolutely working hard 24/7! We harvest twice a year because the two main times of year when nectar is flowing the best are spring and fall. So we take the spring honey to give the bees room to fill up the hives for fall, then take the fall honey to give them space when nectar starts flowing again in the spring.
Long answer: Even though the bees are making honey all the time, it’s not always ready to be harvested. In order for it to be shelf-stable and not ferment in your cupboards, the moisture content has to be below 18%. After the bees fill the sections of comb with honey, they fan it with their wings to help dry it, then cover, or cap, the honey with a thin coating of wax. When the entire frame has been filled and capped, THEN we pull the frames to spin them out. Even though you can absolutely eat the uncapped honey, it is NOT shelf stable and won’t last like the capped honey will. Side note: Even though we don’t spin any uncapped frames, we do still test our capped honey when we’re ready to harvest just to make sure the moisture content is where it needs to be. Needless to say, it takes a while for the bees to fill the frames, cap the honey, etc, and since we are a small operation, we simply don’t have an unlimited supply.
Another reason we only harvest twice a year is because our main priority is the health of our hives. The main reasons we got in to beekeeping were to help the dwindling honeybee population and to pollinate our fruit trees. Honey is just a sweet bonus! We always want to make sure our bees have enough honey for themselves first and foremost. They have their boxes to fill first, and only once those are filled will they move on to the ones we spin out for ourselves. If we aren’t sure they’ll have enough to get through dry spells or especially through winter, we won’t take from their supply. We wish we had honey year-round for you all, but we’d need more hives and less day jobs! For now, we’re happy to share what we do have when we have it!
Keep an eye out for more Q&A, and feel free to comment with any questions you might have as well!
