Read more about the article YouTube: Honey Harvesting Tricks for Home Gardeners
Bees take advantage of arugula that has bolted to seed in last week's heat.

YouTube: Honey Harvesting Tricks for Home Gardeners

Continue ReadingYouTube: Honey Harvesting Tricks for Home Gardeners

It's honey harvesting time and we documented our latest harvest so you can see how it's done. We provide visual aids in this video for our favorite way to get bees out of the super you plan to harvest. We show you our harvesting equipment (handmade by our friends at Honeylove.org), and our other favorite tools to use during the process. Homegrown honey is the best. It's wild, it's treatment-free and it's raw. No heating, no filtering, just crushed and…

Read more about the article Honey Tasting Tips
Get your own tasting wheel from UC Davis.

Honey Tasting Tips

Continue ReadingHoney Tasting Tips

While attending the Heirloom Expo 2016 we discovered there would be a honey competition, that is to say, a contest for the best tasting honey. Since we are at or near honey harvesting time, it's appropriate to share a few tips if you plan to have your own honey tasting this fall. Honey tasting is fun, but more complex than you might expect. To keep it light, you can score the results from "best tasting" to "not so much." Judging …

Harvesting Honey Like the Pros

Continue ReadingHarvesting Honey Like the Pros

Late summer/early fall was the perfect time for harvesting honey, and while we've done it in the past on a small scale, our latest harvest required the right equipment to handle a larger batch. We looked to our friends at HoneyLove.org to help. As members of HoneyLove, we can check out community equipment instead of buying and storing bulky buckets ourselves. Believe me, this is the way to go. The harvest was light, since it was the first year, but…

Read more about the article First Honey Harvest – Part 2
Finished honey ready for eating

First Honey Harvest – Part 2

Continue ReadingFirst Honey Harvest – Part 2

A few weeks ago, we harvested a frame of honeycomb from our bee hive. We've enjoyed eating thin slices of comb and chewing on it to extract the honey. What you're left with is like chewing gum, but in this case you can either spit it out or swallow it (it's technically a fat, not a wax, so it's safe to ingest). Regardless of whether that grosses you out or not, it's a fascinating experience. Still, we wanted honey to…

Read more about the article Oh Sweet Goodness: First Honey Harvest
Photos by Andrew Cheeseman

Oh Sweet Goodness: First Honey Harvest

Continue ReadingOh Sweet Goodness: First Honey Harvest

We couldn't stand the suspense any longer. Our bees were filling up frame after frame of their hive with golden nectar and we wanted to share the experience. So we donned our suits and veils and harvested a single frame for ourselves. Oh, sweet goodness! The frame was heavy with precious cargo, with each hexagonal cell covered in wax capping to let us know that it's ready. Open cells of comb are not ready; bees wait until the moisture content…

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