Beekeeping Class

This winter we have been taking a beekeeping class and we are learning alot! It has been really interesting and we are hoping to expand our beehives this Spring. We had 3 hives on our farm last year (1 belonging to us and 2 others belonging to a friend) and we could really tell that they helped pollinate the garden. We saw bees all of the time and our yields for most things were good, even though we had a less than ideal growing season with our wet and cooler than normal Summer. The wet and cool weather also took a toll on the honey harvest. We were only able to harvest 3 pints of honey from our hive and our friend harvested around 150 lbs. ( I think) of honey from 4 hives. We have learned in our bee class that in a good year it is nothing to harvest 150 lbs of honey per hive! We are hoping to add 2 more hives to our 1 that we already have...and we are hoping for a Summer that is a bit warmer and drier! If all goes well, we'll have some all natural honey to sell!

Honey Harvest

I thought I would share some pictures of our recent honey harvest!

These are the guys from Busy Bee Acres, all suited up and ready to harvest honey.

This is honey from their box on our farm. See how it is FULL of honey. They set their's up at the very beginning of the season.

This is from our box that was set up later in the season. Quite a difference. They ended up getting 5 gallons of honey from 4 bee hives. We got 3 pints from our 1 bee hive. We are hoping to get another hive built over the winter, plus get them both set out early in the spring so we get a bigger honey harvest next year!

This is a picture of the smoker. The wood chips inside smoke to calm the bees and help keep them from stinging.

Thanks to Busy Bee Acres from Otley for all their help this year with the honey bees. It is something we are quite interested in and still learning about. Hopefully we'll have a great 2010 honey harvest!