A Honey of a Harvest

A year ago I wrote about extracting honey from the hives at the college with my friend Hugh. In July we did it again, with a few more helpers including my niece Crys from Aurora, Colorado. I will say that Crys spent more time sitting in the shade than she did playing with the bees, but she was there and was a good sport! The best part of the day was that, after everything was cleaned up, we got to take the extractor and some tools home with us for our own harvest!

Our two beautiful hives of honey bees were ready to be robbed. We were just days away from our first harvest and we were ready. We had all the tools we needed and we had all the people power we wanted, two of us and the dog.

4-frame extractor

bucket with gate and lid

 

uncapping tray

On Friday we put the bee confuser on the hives. It is really called a bee escape board and it allows the bees to leave the honey frames but they can't get back in. The fewer bees in the honey frames when we take them off, the fewer bees in the house, in the honey and in my hair. I have vivid memories of my Dad taking honey frames and using a brush to push the bees away. He did his extracting in the cellar of our house with bees flying everywhere and yes, they did manage to get into the house on a regular basis.

We put the honey supers into big plastic containers with covers and brought them to the side yard. We brushed away any straggling bees and brought the frames into the sun room. Using a heated knife, we scraped the cappings off the frames and collected that wax and honey in the capping bucket. Once we had 4 frames open, we put them into the extractor for spinning. The extractor is a centrifuge which is spun by hand. The honey comes flying out of the frames and collects on the bottom.

Jim and the hot knife uncapping the frames

We had a total of 16 frames from the two hives. In 3 hours we had uncapped, extracted and filters 48 pounds of pure beautiful honey. Of course, the entire room was sticky and we were sticky but we were really excited about our first harvest.

We let the honey sit for a day in the bucket and then we put it into .5 pound and 1 pound jars, ready to sell or gift. We are very proud of ourselves for keeping a hive alive through the winter, managing a second hive and getting both hives in shape to produce. We are very proud of our bees too!

Buddy & Jim bottling

beautiful wildflower honey

We are selling it locally. If you are interested in buying some McBees Bergen County Wildflower Honey. please send me an email or a message. We aren't shipping it anywhere because that doesn't make sense to us. so here is our label, created by DeepCereal.

Jars and Labels and Packaging.....Oh My

For as long as I can remember, my Dad's honey label was the same, yellowish with brown text with his name and a space for the weight. At some point, he added a small label to the back of his jars explaining about granulation and how to fix it. He also used the same classic jars in various sizes and the plastic honey bear container.  

 

 Nothing fancy because my Dad was a classic New England Yankee. His label clearly says "Here's honey which I put in a jar. It is pure and it weighs 1 pound. What you see is what you get." I can still picture the full jars on the kitchen table, lined up for labeling back in the days before self-sticking labels. Everyone in town probably had one of these jars in their kitchen and they would return the empty jars to him for refill.
 

He added the back labels when he got tired of listening to people tell him that their honey "went bad" and turned to sugar. Honey does not go bad. In fact there is documentation of honey found in ancient tombs and it was still edible. Read this article from Smithsonian Magazine- The Science behind Honey's Ancient Shelf Life for a real explanation.

All the bee supply vendors sell labels. Some can be customized with your own apairy name, type f honey (wildflower, raw, pure ). Most are generic and have blank space for the weigh and type of honey. Labels can also be custome designed and created. It all depends upon what you, the beekeeper, want to say. Take a look at Google images for an idea of just how many honey labels there are- Honey Labels.

This past fall, my club, Northeast New Jersey Beekeepers Association, held a honey label contest. Club members submitted their labels and other club members voted on which they considered to be the best, most interesting, etc. the label designs were interesting, as were the choices for winners. Winning entries were- J First place, I Second place and A Third place.



Northeast NJ Beekeepers Association Sept. 2014 Label Contest
 

I've been pondering my packaging and my labels. What do I want my brand to look like? First, I'm not really looking to have a brand nor do I expect to have a honey crop large enough for world-wide recognition. I love the traditional, glass jars used by my Dad so that decision has been made. I also like the idea of clear labels so you can see through the jar and through the honey.

A talented artist that I have know for her entire life has created various labels for me to use. I'm not going to share them with you now because I am not yet sure which I like the best. I also don't want anyone to borrow my label and use it for themselves! I can tell you that she does some really interesting art which you can see at her Etsy Store-DeepCereal. Her work has a sense of whimsy that I really like and it isn't too serious.

So, while my bees rest up in their hive, I'm busy getting ready for spring and my 2nd hive and thinking about jars and labels and packaging as well as extracting and swarming and bee stings.

Happy January!