The owner of Stonehurst who usually lives in Germany came home for a couple of weeks. I wanted to harvest some of their honey so she could get a taste of it. We opened the hives on Sunday.
I always love to see the bees clustering around a broken pool of honey gathering it up. We took four frames of honey from their hives - only from the top box of hive 1 - to harvest.
Crushed it looked really pretty but in the jars was more medium than the light look you see here.
Because the frames were really pretty I cut five squares of cut comb honey and put it in my freezer. My agreement with them is that this year we split the honey. That is my recompense for being their beekeeper.
After I crushed the honey comb, a bee in the house tried to help me with clean up!
Here are my five cut comb squares. Really this probably isn't pretty enough for a honey contest because the cappings are too "wet" but maybe I'll enter them or look for better squares in my next harvest hive visit. Either way they will be delicious to eat on hot biscuits.
I bottled the rest of their honey. From eight frames we got the five cut comb squares, four classic queenline bottles, two refilled Kroger plastic 40 oz containers (I was horrified because I think honey belongs in new glass containers, but Barb has ordered some pretty jars for Stonehurst and this will do in the interim) and
1.5 hex jars.
I bottled the four queenlines as if for a honey show. Stonehurst as an inn is a member of MABA and therefore could enter the honey contest but I can only enter once, so it seems to me, since I like on my own to enter honey contests, that Stonehurst should enter on their own and Caroline, the innkeeper, should make the entry, not me on their behalf.
Because of the four honey contest bottles, I am coming out on the short end of the stick in this division of the honey, since they are getting about nine pounds of honey to my 4.5.
I'll make it up in the next harvest, however.
It was a pretty start to their harvest. There are still four eight frame boxes to harvest on the hives at Stonehurst.
I always love to see the bees clustering around a broken pool of honey gathering it up. We took four frames of honey from their hives - only from the top box of hive 1 - to harvest.
Crushed it looked really pretty but in the jars was more medium than the light look you see here.
Because the frames were really pretty I cut five squares of cut comb honey and put it in my freezer. My agreement with them is that this year we split the honey. That is my recompense for being their beekeeper.
After I crushed the honey comb, a bee in the house tried to help me with clean up!
Here are my five cut comb squares. Really this probably isn't pretty enough for a honey contest because the cappings are too "wet" but maybe I'll enter them or look for better squares in my next harvest hive visit. Either way they will be delicious to eat on hot biscuits.
I bottled the rest of their honey. From eight frames we got the five cut comb squares, four classic queenline bottles, two refilled Kroger plastic 40 oz containers (I was horrified because I think honey belongs in new glass containers, but Barb has ordered some pretty jars for Stonehurst and this will do in the interim) and
1.5 hex jars.
I bottled the four queenlines as if for a honey show. Stonehurst as an inn is a member of MABA and therefore could enter the honey contest but I can only enter once, so it seems to me, since I like on my own to enter honey contests, that Stonehurst should enter on their own and Caroline, the innkeeper, should make the entry, not me on their behalf.
Because of the four honey contest bottles, I am coming out on the short end of the stick in this division of the honey, since they are getting about nine pounds of honey to my 4.5.
I'll make it up in the next harvest, however.
It was a pretty start to their harvest. There are still four eight frame boxes to harvest on the hives at Stonehurst.
Wow Linda!
ReplyDeleteYou know, I look at your blog postings and I realise how much I've got to learn.
Great read.
Another excellent blog from you! You are so extravagant.
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