Honey Bees #5: 2021 Honey Harvest

This summer we completed our second ever honey harvest! We are thrilled to announce that our 2021 honey harvest totaled about 220 lbs of honey. Our beekeeper facilitated a lot of growth this year in our apiary. Back in April she successfully split two hives and they both produced honey for our harvest. Most new hives don’t produce honey within the first year, so this was a huge success!

Since beginning our beekeeping journey two years ago, we have learned so much. From this transformative experience, our beekeeper continues to learn more every day. Beekeeping is very gratifying to work!

In addition to our 2021 Worker Bee Reserve, we also harvested the honeycomb. Raw Honeycomb is available online today! We are proud of our beekeeper’s experimentation with comb honey. The bees started building comb before she could add frames to the box but she went with their initiative and followed their lead. She learned that bees will make straight, beautiful walls of honeycomb without even having the frames to build on. This experiment proved successful!

Seeing her hard work come to fruition in a beautiful product brings tears to her eyes. When we take boxes from the hives, we extract honey from the frames and strain our honey. Then, we bottle our honey in glass jars. Lastly, we hand-label our honey using Sticker Mule’s Label Dispenser. This has been a game-changer for labeling efficiency! Sticker Mule has been our label supplier for years, and we love the high-quality custom products they offer.

Our beekeeper shares, “We started initially with four hives, and I just have to say that it’s been a super therapeutic experience for me. I deal with anxiety and some other issues and you never would think that it would be relaxing and therapeutic to step into a bee yard. But it really can be. Because you stay in the moment. That connection with nature is an amazing experience.”