First Honey Harvest!

[Mrs Dobby]

Mmmm! We bottled 2 jars of our first honey harvest yesterday, its fabulous!

We harvested 8 super frames of honey, so there should be about 19lb in the settling tank, but we couldnt resist taking a couple of jars to try it! Wonderful!!

[Nicos]

That looks really yummy!!

Well done!

[digthatchick]

Well done Mrs D - Amazing how those little critters can make such beautiful food.
I am looking into beekeeping in the next year or so.

[taff]

very professional
looks fab, I am having honey envy

[lettucegrow!]

How exciting- wish I lived neare to offer tasting services!

[shirlthegirl43]

yummy looking! probably a dozy question but how do you get cloudy honey? for some reason I prefer cloudy to clear

[walldanzig]

I was looking at Bee keeping next year but think I will have to attend a course as I think there is massive scope for mistakes

[CaroltheCarrot]

Thats great,I am now really looking forward to going on the course next year,I am too scared of mistakes not to

[trolleydolly]

WOW, that looks great! Mrs Dobby, lucky you

[Mrs Dobby]

Thanks guys, it tastes as good as it looks!

Cloudy honey (soft set) is a creamed mix of runny honey and a small amount of granulated (all honey granulates with time, its the sugar crystals growing, tho it can be reversed by gently warming the honey), which is then beaten like mad to create soft set honey!

We were fortunate enough to find a friend whos a beekeeper who mentored us for the first year, (and is still available to ask any questions we have), so although Pat and Colin (our co-beekeepers) have done the basic BBKA course, we havent (couldnt do that night as we both work), but its a good idea to get some training before you take the plunge and invest in hives, equipment and bees!

If you've not already contacted your local BBKA group and want to do the course next year, then I'd advise you to get in touch with them now as the courses fill up very fast, Pat and Colin had to wait 12 months to go on their course!

If we have enough, then we may well be selling some honey via our blog in the near future, depends on our harvest total tho, as we've lots of folks already queuing up to buy some, but with 6 hives, then we could get between 150 and 500lb of honey, if they were all established!

[Mrs Dobby]

Well, we bottled the honey last night, from 8 'super' frames we got a total of 22 1/2lb, so 30x 12oz jars in total, not bad for our first batch! Lee took 20 jars to work today (as he's got advance orders for 20 jars.... if they all actually buy it!), so we'll see what happens when he gets home tonight! We're giving our plot neighbours a jar each (to say thanks for putting up with the bees so close to their plots), and the rest will be sold to other plotholders (at a discount, with some of the proceeds going into a special projects fund we're starting, the idea being that we'll have something to give back to the allotment for letting us have the bees!)

Its possible that we'll have another batch of honey to harvest again this week, fingers crossed!

[Snadger]

Well done Mrs D. Just wondered if you had any animosity from the other allotmenteers or any vandalism at all? Did you have to put some sort of deflection around the hives to alter the bees flight path so they came in above head height?

Hope to be having a go myself come March next year!

[pipkins]

Wow your honey looks really good.

[Mrs Dobby]

Hi Snadger,

We informed all the plotholders before we got the bees via a letter, asking if they minded, but those whose plots are within 100yards from us we had to have agreement from, otherwise we wouldn't be able to have them on the plot. We've set up 2 apiaries, which are fenced with willow screening, which not only shelters the hives from any wind, hides them from plain sight, but also makes the bees go above head height before they fly off from their homes! The apiaries are near the back fence of our plot (with a field behind the edging trees) and we have a small wood to the right of our plot, so they are sheltered and almost totally out of view from the bottom of our plot (and certainly cant be seen from the road outside the plot), as you can probably see from the piccies below!


Apiary 1 - our first apiary, on plot 2, big enough for 3 hives!


Apiary 2 - our newer apiary - on plot1, big enough for 5 to 8 hives! You can just see it at the back of the plot, to the left of the greenhouse, right at the back!

Or, if easier to see what I mean, there's the planting plans on our blog, which show the locations of the apiaries! Scroll between plots 2 and 1 with the arrows!

As to vandalism, none, we've put warning bee signs to alert folks not to enter the apiaries without protection, and most folks seem happy that they are at the plot, especially with the soft fruit harvests we've all been getting! The pollination has been fantastic, fruit and beans are absolutely dripping with crops!

Its a fascinating thing to do Snadger, I hope you get the chance, and that your bees are as productive as ours! If you need any advice or info, just give us a shout, ok?

[Mrs Dobby]

Hi Sara, thanks