I apologize for not posting in a while.  While the bees worked over the summer, I had to focus on my engineering company.

We lost a number of hives over the summer.  There are multiple reasons for hive loss – beetles, viruses, weak queen, and the list goes on.  We lost all but one at our country property.  Billy lost some in Katy, but was able to replenish his count by removing hives from locations where they were unwanted.  Given our loss and seemingly fragile development of the new hives, we waited a while to extract.

We finally harvested the honey about four weeks ago.  We had about 14 supers to extract.

One important thing to remember when you extract honey is to try to remove as many bees from the supers as possible before moving them to your extraction staging area.  We were in a hurry and did not do as good a job as possible.  The result was A LOT of bees around our extraction area.  I am not a fan of doing anything with A LOT of bees buzzing around and landing on any honey-coated surface; hence, I opted to extract wearing my suit.  Most folks laughed at me, but better than sorry is my policy when it comes to personal protective equipment (PPE) and bees.

We extracted about 300 lbs. of honey.  We did not have enough jars and had to order more.  The cost of jars and labels have gone up so we had to increase our pricing.  We also ordered some smaller 8 oz. jars and are offering them for the first time.

Caroline and her siblings helped jar and label the honey.  They are now moving into sales mode.

As usual the honey is going fast.  Let us know if you want some.

YBIB,

John the Elder & Caroline the Younger