Archive for August, 2011

Harvest at dusk.

Sunday, August 21st, 2011

I sold the last of the honey that I harvested last month. I have to go out and get some more.

I harvest honey late in the day, just before dark. This way the bees leave me alone when I do the extracting. If I do it during the day, the bees find the honey and I spend most of my time skimming off drowning bees. If I get the frames around 7:30, it is dark by the time I start extracting. The bees are all in bed. I turn on the lights in the back and from 8pm to 10:30 I am uncapping, spinning, and filtering honey. By 10:30 I have a couple of 5 gallon pailsĀ  full of honey that are ready to bottle. I put them up on the counter so Erica can do the bottling the next day. The pails have “honey cocks” so Erica can just turn the honey on and off when she fills the bottles.

I have about 100 12oz bears left, I also have two dozen 8 ounce bears that I give away at Christmas. I might use all of these up in the next harvest.

I am ordering glass containers for this fall so that I can sell them (at a premium) for Christmas presents. I might not have enough bottles for the next harvest, so I might have to do this soon. Bottles take up a huge amount of room, so I don’t want to order before I need them.