Our hives are in 8 back yards around the north end of Seattle. This is one group. We plan to expand to another 3 backyards next spring.
Another group of hives.
My husband with a beautiful frame of capped honey. We were taking off the supers (top honey storage units on a hive) from this hive and getting the last of the honey for this year. The bees will still keep gathering honey on nice days but they get to keep it for their winter stores. Also, we wanted to get all of the supers off before the ivy started to bloom as the ivy honey doesn’t taste or smell good.
The season is over. The supers have come off of the hives and the bees are being fed sugar water to make sure that they have enough stores for the winter. The last of the honey has been taken and extracted. This season has been a poor one due to the rainy, wet weather. We averaged about 25 pounds of honey per hive with some hives producing much more and others having no surplus honey at all.
I am already looking forward to next year’s harvest. I have learned that I love the honey that is produced when the linden trees are in bloom. We have also discovered that we have a lot of linden trees in our vicinity. I know that I don’t like ivy honey AT ALL. Ivy is blooming right now and the bees can have that honey for themselves for the winter. I am glad that ivy doesn’t bloom when other important, tasty flowers are blooming. If you smell ivy flowers, that is just the way that ivy honey tastes! Yuck.
We loved being at the Phinney Farmers’ market. We loved meeting people from the community and educating them about bees and honey. Thank you customers and supporters. I will go make sugar water so we can keep feeding the bees so they have lots of food for the winter.