Honeyfest Prep / Fall Prep

-Posted by Isaac

We've been bottling like crazy this last week for the Honeyfest. If you're coming out to Lithopolis this Saturday, we'll see you there. Hopefully it's not a wash-out. Most years, the rain seems to threaten but never quite materializes. If it does rain... oh well... just hang out under our tent. We're bringing two this year. 

We'll have all the usual available: 

Spring, Summer, Fall Honey, Lavender and Lemon Verbena infused, Naturally Granulated, Comb Honey, Chunk Honey, Bee Pollen, Handcrafted Soap...

Plus something special:
Introducing Tulip Poplar honey...

This is honey that came from a few bee yards south of here near the Hocking Hills where tulip poplar trees abound. When I extracted the supers coming out of those yards (early July), I was surprised to see the honey was black and tasted completely different. A dark smokey flavor that lingers heavy on the palate.  I separated these buckets of honey from the rest, and we've been waiting on labels so we could sell  it as another varietal honey. Well, they came in a couple weeks ago, and what better place to introduce it then the Honeyfest!
We live in a wonderful area of the state. You can have such completely different honeys produced just twenty or thirty miles apart.

In other news...
Between the morning and evening bottling sessions, I've been working on Fall prep for the hives. That involves taking a yard that looks like this:

And making it look this this:

Basically I'm taking supers off, getting the hives ready to collect goldenrod and aster honey with a single box on top. The goldenrod flow just isn't big enough to pile supers on as we did with the summer honey. Some of the weaker hives will need every bit of it just to get beefed up for winter.
Between removing boxes, I check the brood pattern, put Hop Guard mite strips in, feed the weaker hives (sugar water and Honey-B-Healthy) and one other thing-- drench the bees with this stuff called Nozevit.

Jim North (our spry 76 year old neighboring beekeeper) says he's seen real improvement health-wise with his bees. When it comes to knowing bees, I trust Jim's judgement more then anyone. Nozevit is a natural plant polyphenol food supplement. It's supposed to improve the bees' intestinal track and help with digestion.  We'll give it a try this year.

The goldenrod has just started to turn yellow and the bees will soon be busy again after several weeks of nothing to do. What an awesome time of year this is! Warm, sunny and colorful. We've had some recent rain (thanks to my own hurricane) so maybe that will increase the nectar flow from these beautiful Fall flowers.
Here's hoping.
See you at the Honeyfest!