Honey Harvest and Scrumping Season

Today we harvested our honey! I hadn't been to see the bees for ages, in fact the two hives that we harvested from today were practically unrecogniseable. Both had huge populations, whereas the last time I saw them they were two rather pathetic-looking halves of an artificial swarm. It' brilliant to see that they've built up so well, and hopefully with some TLC they'll go into the winter nice and strong. I shouldn't be too surprised though...these are the descendents of the wall hive (see video blog) so they can clearly take care of themselves!


^ The hives; opening up; bees on a frame of sealed honey; lovely docile bees

The honey is gorgeous and light, very flowery with a real citrusy tang to it...I thought it tasted a lot like elderflowers but according to F. N. Howes' 'Plants and Beekeeping' elder is nectarless and bees don't go near it. So it must have come from some other delicious blossom. We got a gallon of the stuff however - a decent harvest from one super. So not the stuff of beekeeping legend, but not bad considering we came into the season with 90% losses.

^ Uncapping - cutting off the wax seals with a warm knife; putting the frames in the centrifugal extractor; the end product!

Afterwards the frames went back to the bees to tidy up the remaining remnants of honey and to fill up again. The weather seems to have picked up a bit (touch wood) so hopefully they'll be able to get some more stores together. Otheriwse we'll just feed some honey back to them :)

And, as if our delicious honey wasn't enough, I can declare that it is the start of the scrumping season! We came home today with some little yellow mirabelle plums. They're a bit watery but lovely and sweet, and stewed up or maybe even dried in the dehydrator they should be delicious...I'm so excited now about picking more of them and the rest of the wildfood to come!