Tonight I bottled more honey from a super I took off of Mellona yesterday. I bottled 12 queenline jars in case I want to put any honey in a honey contest. These jars once put in the dishwasher were never again touched by my hands.
I took the jars out of the dishwasher with a cloth towel; held them with the towel while they filled; still holding them with the towel, put the jar on the counter. I then put all 12 jars in the box in which they came. Tomorrow I will probably freeze them.
In addition, I bottled 9 other 12 oz bottles (one pound of honey in a 12 oz bottle). This batch is still filtering and I expect to get about 2 more 12 oz bottles before all is said and done.
All told so far I have harvested about 77 pounds of honey total from three shallow supers. I only took 9 frames from two of the supers and 6 from the third, so all of this honey has come from a total of 24 shallow frames of honey - which is about 3.2 pounds/frame.
Good year in spite of the drought.
Why not touch the containers when you fill them?
ReplyDeleteWhy not touch the containers when you fill them?
ReplyDeleteThe bees make the honey so if you enter your honey in a contest, really the judges can't judge you on the honey quality - so instead the part that is about the beekeeper is how the honey is bottled.
ReplyDeleteThey look at the jars to see if there are fingerprints on the outside or inside of the jars. Thus I don't want to touch a jar that is being potentially entered in a honey contest.
I'm not a contest person, but in order to go through the various certifications in Georgia toward Master Beekeeper, you have to have entered honey in a contest and won first or second place. So I'm practicing!