Fresh Raw Honey!

[retiredwith4acres]

That 6 gallon came from 3 supers on one good hive and several frames from one super on another hive. It was a good haul but I have heard of much, much better. I have been hearing and reading about in the 10 frame supers to only put 9 frames with proper spacing and supposedly you get more honey. Waiting on my bother's yield to see if we might want to try that.

DesertLady, shelf life can be forever.

Southern, I have been reading a lot about flowers to plant etc. Lavender is one I want to expand, I only have one plant. I have increased my oregano by 4 plants because they love it and it blooms a little after the big honeyflow which is good. We will use buckwheat as our garden cover crop this late summer and I understand they really love it. Did he give you some good plants to get? We are managing the clover in our yard right now for them to have something close, but our yard looks pretty bad a lot of the time.

The honey has come in handy today, I am doing my prep for my colonoscopy tomorrow and have sweetened my drinks with honey to give me some energy since I can't eat. lol

 

[so lucky]

whats the shelf life on jars of honey ?

Pretty much forever. It may crystalize, but it is still good. You can warm it gently to soften.

 

[catjac1975]

What a good son.

Saturday afternoon my son came by to give his old mom some help. He took off the supers of honey, brushed the bees off, handed them to his mother on the screened back porch, and my work began. My DH is sick with chest cold or something with fever and feeling really bad so having my son to do the heavy work was wonderful. I spent 4 hours uncapping, extracting, and draining the honey into buckets. Had to run an hour away to spend the night with my aunt who is in her last days, so I left a mess. Sunday afternoon I cleaned up my mess and bottled up my honey. I have 6 gallons of honey ready for sale and still in process of extra straining for some to show at the county fair. With all that hard work it is still worth the time, expense, and energy. Such a rewarding experience! BUT, what will I do next year if all 6 of my hives survive and produce, this year was only one good hive and one not so good. If I have six good hives, I will be spending several days working "bigtime"!

Folks that complain about the price of good raw honey need to have to help extracting and helping with all the work to go with the process.

I can't imagine one of my friends and her husband putting up 271 quarts in 12 days, and they are older than I am, but more experienced. lol

 

[Smiles Jr.]

Yeah, retired, our back three acres looks like a white clover garden every year at this time. There's not a whole lot of pollen and nectar for the girls at this time of year around here. Basswood trees are in full bloom but there aren't very many around. I like your idea of using buckwheat for a cover crop. I get so busy around here that I usually forget about the girls until fall.

I have one very angry colony and I plan to move my whole apiary to our field across the street in a few weeks. I have an 18 acre plot across the street that I lease out to a young boy who plants beans and corn. I've had my eye on a nice sunny spot over there along the edge of the woods and I can drive up to it unless it's very wet. I'll re-queen that hive when I make the move.