Honey Harvest 2014 – The Results
I approach the honey harvest with a mix of excitement, after all, this is what it’s all about; but also dread, as I find the extraction a bit of a drag plus it was too nice a day to be inside.
Having spoken to a few beekeepers, I decided to take off the honey on the 3rd August in order to allow the bees more time to bring forage into their hives for the winter and to allow me to use Apiguard earlier without the risks of the bees starving.
Great Expectations
I’ve always been a glass half-full kind of guy (rather than half-empty) but I surpassed myself this time.
In mid-July I had 11 supers in operation and was sure I had about 150lb of honey and was on track to produce 200lb from my 4 hives. I was even managing to get my wife excited about my honey production with grand plans of getting our toddler to set up a small shop at the end of the garden with neighbours queuing down the road to buy my local wares.
However … when I removed 4 supers on 3rd August it seemed I had about 80lb of honey. (I think the bees had been eating their stores).
And then … when I jarred it the reality was I had 35lb (70 x 1/2lb jars) and that’s after literally scraping the barrel.
I thought I was going to have 300 jars for sale to raise money for a couple of new hives and still have enough to give to patient and greedy friends who listen to my bee stories. The reality is I’ll have 30 jars for friends and 40 for sale (which will only buy part of a hive).
Still, ever the optimist, I’m seeing this result as a 350% improvement on last year and not bad considering I had one colony in April. And of course, the really important bit, is that the honey tastes fantastic (I got the ultimate endorsement when a beekeepers wife told her husband that she preferred my honey to his and he agreed!)
I have created a new page detailing my honey yields and comparing with the UK and South West averages.
Read More
- New Page: My Honey Yields (compared with UK and South West averages)
- Related Page: How-To Guide: Harvesting Honey
- Where we are in the Beekeeping Calendar