The Year Of The Lemon Honey

I took the honey supers off of the hive last saturday when I had time, but I didn’t harvest the honey from them until tuesday when I had a full day off. It was a messy process, as always, but I got 10 pints out of it! I don’t know what my bees have been eating this year though because this honey is sour. It’s delicious!! It tastes like someone squeezed a lemon over the frames while the bees were working, and I have to say it’s got to be my favorite flavor of honey yet. I had to keep myself from eating out of the jars while I worked.

The bees were amazingly calm while I collected the honey, and I didn’t get stung on my gloves once. I did use a little bit of smoke, at the beginning, just because the colony is so big, but throughout the whole ordeal they were perfectly calm. I barely even squished anyone. I didn’t do a hive inspection during the harvesting, because I didn’t really have time (I had an end of summer party to go to for work that night) but also because it would’ve been kind of silly given how much I had disrupted everything. I’ll open them up tomorrow to make sure they’re doing well. I can’t imagine they’re struggling given the amount of activity at their door, and I know they’ve got pollen because 1 in 4 workers comes back with their baskets full.

Oh! I almost forgot to mention that a couple of the cells on the honey frames I harvested had GREEN “nectar” in them. There aren’t any candy factories nearby, so I can’t imagine where they got the green nectar from, but it was pretty funny to see those two cells filled up with it. I couldn’t believe it when I saw them. I hope these girls make it through the winter alright. They’re large numbers do bother me a bit, but I can’t imagine that such a robust colony doesn’t make it. They filled three deep boxes this year and they started late as a 3 lb package for crying out loud!

I haven’t had a chance to properly check on my aunts hive, but I know they never recovered like they should have. I’m gonna head down there sometime in the next week to reduce their hive down and make sure I won’t need to have my aunt feed them during the winter.