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Harvested Honey from Frozen Hives

April 14th, 2014

I lost a couple of hives in the Polar Vortex. They were healthy hives, but were so cold that they could not move to get to the stored honey so they starved to death within inches of food. I pulled the stored honey and used some of it to feed my new bees and yesterday I put the rest in my homemade centrifuge and spun out the honey.

The honey is what they call “core” honey. This is the honey stored near the queen and used for feeding the queen. Usually I harvest the excess honey stored at the top of the hive and leave this for the bees to make it through the winter. Core honey is rare in that it is not normally produced and left with the hive for winter food.

The honey is dark and thick as mud with a wonderful flavor. It has much pollen. I saw various kinds of honey as I uncapped the cells. There was white honey from the early Spring, golden honey from late Spring and Summer, and the thick black honey from the fall. Because it has been stored for a year or more the honey was very heavy and thick. Aging honey like this tends to darken it.

The Spring honey will not be ready until late May or early June. In the mean time this batch will be of interest to allergy sufferers as it contains honey for a whole year, all mixed up.