The first honey harvest of the season is always a fun and exciting time because you never know exactly what you'll get. Will the honey be light or dark? Sweet or strong?
A lot of beekeepers around Virginia have reported getting dark amber honey from their first round of harvests this year. I feel like I lucked out because my first round came out light and lovely, with a golden hue and just the slightest hint of peaches on the back side.
Last year, my entire harvest between June and August came out to about 30 pounds one and a half hives. This year, I extracted 38 pounds on the first round alone from two hives! I'll be interested to see if my future harvests in July and August tie or beat that.
Extracting honey is a messy business that requires removing the honey from the hives (sometimes over the bees' objections), cutting off the wax caps, and spinning the frames in my extractor where centrifugal force does most of the work.
After that, the honey passes through two filters to catch off the bits of leftover wax, pollen and bee bits that may be hanging around in it. Then it goes into the bottles/jars.
This year, we decided to try using recycled Oui yogurt jars for most of the honey. You can buy after-market snap-on lids to go on the jars, which makes them great for storing stuff.
The lids are also the perfect size for my circular labels. I am a little concerned about the tops coming off in transit, but a set of heat-shrink bands ought to solve that problem.
