Harvesting

You ever wonder why it is so hard to find local honey right around the holidays when you want it the most? Well as you may have guessed the weather has everything to do with it. Our sweet little honeybees enjoy their environment around 95 degrees Fahrenheit (honestly same) and so when it gets chilly outside they will not leave the hive at all. This coupled with the fact that resources are limited for flowing plants in the fall and winter means these girls start to use the honey they have been storing all summer. Now when I say girls, I literally mean only the female bees since they boot out the male drone bees that are only used for mating in the summer. Crazy right?!

So to keep the hive from starving we beekeepers can only harvest so much from each hive. Through practicing mindful beekeeping we never take more from our little honey bees’ stores than we can safely extract. Each harvest of golden delight is a gift and we thank “our girls” for their hard work and make sure they have plenty of resources for themselves.

As we have been tending our hives over the past several years we have learned the balance of all our hive locations to master the timing to keep our hives thriving throughout the winter. While it may not be a perfect art, we were able to get a plentiful harvest of honey and have our honeybees going strong.