Spring Honey

-Posted by Isaac

A few days ago I started pulling the Spring honey off the hives and unfortunately I'm already done. After all that bragging about how great the bees looked building up this Spring, there was surprisingly little honey to be had. Though I did make about 100 splits from the strongest hives. Maybe that had a little something to do with the lack of early honey... fault of the beekeeper, not the bees? Possibly. 

Oh well. The bees are looking strong and active (especially the splits), primed for a great summer nectar flow if there is any at all to be had. The honey that did come off this Spring is beautiful, tasty and dry. Most frames were only partially capped:

Normally this would mean a while in the drying room, but even the completely uncapped frames were testing out at 16% moisture. I guess a dry Spring means dry honey.

The uncapper didn't get much of a workout with so many frames going straight into the extractor.

 We have a "Handyman" uncapper (from Dadant, I think). Although the uncapping knives are run with a motor, the frames are placed in by hand (endlessly) and then cranked down through the machine. This leaves you with tired shoulders in need of a Father's Day massage.

 I had to steal parts from a water pump in Jayne's greenhouse to fix the busted heater pump on the uncapper. (It saved about a hundred dollars and shipping time, but I may never see that massage.)

We didn't get around to snapping pictures until the very last extractor load. You can see the frames on this last round had to be spaced out to balance the machine.

Although the total amount of honey pulled was disappointing (about 700 lbs), it was still uplifting to see the first of this year's crop spilling into pails.

It takes such a short time, and there is so little of the Spring locust honey, I don't bother with tanks or in-line filters. It all goes straight into five-gallon pails.

Gorgeous, delicate water-white honey. And the taste, oh so special...

 You locust honey lovers know that we don't wholesale this. You can only find it by visiting us at a market (or buy it online). This gives me a chance to brag about it face to face.

Although most of the frames were partially or completely uncapped, we did find a few that can go to the Pickaway County Fair next week.

Now that's just showing off!

With the extracting done, today became a project day. First on the list (Jayne's list): a new sandbox.
Here are the kids "helping" me move about a ton of sand by way of wheelbarrow trips across the play-yard.

Next on the list: fix the holes in the chicken pen and move our soon-to-be egg layers.  And build a fire-pit.
Daylights a'burnin!