Honey Harvest Time!

 We had set our extraction date almost as early as they offered because typically July 4th is a sure indicator that the honey flow is over in North Texas. When we started pulling frames, the bees had already started eating into the honey stores. We took off supers from our two strongest hives as the third hive was a struggling rescue colony. Neal took frames out and did the shake test if there were any open comb and Sophie and I brushed and shook bees off, then I would walk it over to a bin with a lid while he pulled the next. We estimated that we had between 60-90 pounds, though we don't have much experience in estimating this. 

Then the fun part! We headed over to the John and Skip Talbert's facility to extract the honey. It is always fun and we enjoy catching up with our old instructors. We ended up with just over 60 pounds. This is much better than our first two extractions.

Our honey was sweet but not overly so, and had clover and possibly a mint, such as horse mint, because it had a bit of a zing at the end. I tasted mint but Skip Talbert was the one to suggest it may be horse mint though it usually blooms at it's peak in July and August. 

We were excited to expand our customer base this year because of the larger harvest. We used Facebook to get the word out about our hobby and available honey and had to print labels that affixed to the jar this year to continue to abide by the laws. We sold the 1, 2, and 4 pound bottles. We were out of honey in a couple weeks. Because of the economy being rough right now, we were glad we had bought bottles a couple months early because not only were they hard to come by, but the price shot up nearly double for some bottles. We were very pleased with the bee's work and proud and excited to share our honey with our customers.