I am sure many of you know we have been keeping bees this past year. What a lark (as Nan would say). The picture to the side is when they first came. They came in this small cage and then we "released" them into the hive we had built. Many thanks to the kids who helped me build the hive. When they first arrived, they came with a queen and about 10,000 bees. The average bee lives just 60 days. After about 3 months, we estimate we had about 50,000 to 60,000 bees. The queen lays about 2,000 eggs a day.
Just a couple of weeks ago, we extracted our share of the honey (we have to leave some for the bees so they can overwinter). Most of what we had read said we would be lucky to harvest 30 lbs the first year--because the bees spend a lot of energy building the wax honeycomb during the first year. An interesting note, to produce a pound of honey, one bee would have to travel the same distance as going around the entire earth 3 times. To do this, this solo bee would require 1 ounce of honey for food. It is definitely a good thing there are 60,000 of them. We were extremely blessed. We extracted 67 lbs of honey and 24 honeycomb rounds. What a blast. I would love to send everyone some honey, but I am not sure how it would travel in the mail. We will save some for you so when you come out we can give you a bottle or two.
5 comments:
we can't wait for you to come over and help Wade get set up for next year.
Just mail me some bees and I'll figure it out from there.
WOW! That is amazing - really amazing.
The Honey is delicious! AND when I first tired it I had a sore throat and so came home, put a little in some warm water and by morning felt much better. Local honey is a natural antibiotic-----Trevor's is on the list!
I don't think I've ever eaten so many PB and honey sandwiches as I have in the last few weeks since you gifted us a jar. It's delicious.
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