I have previously written about harvesting honey Nothing else in beekeeping is quite like watching the bees turn nectar into liquid gold, so I can’t resist doing it again!
As nectar and pollen producing trees and flowers start to bloom in the spring, honey bees take advantage of the expanding food sources to raise more bees, and grow the colony. As the population of worker bees increases, and more floral sources become available, the bees reach a point where they move from bringing in just enough nectar to feed the colony to bringing in enough to pack away extra stores, in the form of honey. Beekeepers call this the “honey flow”, and it seems to begin around the time that the dandelions bloom, giving dandelions a special place in the hearts of beekeepers. In the spring, we beekeepers add boxes we call honey supers to the top of the hive. The honey that the bees store in those boxes is the honey that we will harvest. When the honey flow begins, the pace of honey production can be quite dramatic. Sometimes it seems like only a matter of days for the hives to go from light to loaded with nectar and honey. That explains why, last week, when I went out planning to collect around 30 honey frames for what I thought would be a modest first harvest, I came back in with 73. More than enough for a good day’s work, and plenty of honey to start coming to market to share it with you!
Doing a honey harvest requires knowing when the honey is ready. Nectar, when the bees bring it into hive, averages about 80% water. To make it into honey the bees remove about 75% of the water, mostly by evaporation. When they are done drying it, the honey has a water content of 16-18.5%, making it a supersaturated solution of glucose and fructose (sugar). Supersaturated means there is more sugar dissolved in the water than could happen naturally. The low moisture content of honey is important, as a water content above 19% would put it at risk to ferment. Fermenting honey has uses, for example, for making mead, but bees don’t like mead! Neither to I for that matter. And even if you like mead, and want to make some, my goal is to leave the mead making up to you. I don’t want your honey turning to mead in my honey jar! So, I need to make sure I am not harvesting honey until it is dry enough. Conveniently, the bees tell me when that is. Due to being supersaturated, honey is hydroscopic (meaning if left open to the air, it will pull water from the air and get wetter). To keep the water content from rising, honey needs to be in a closed container. Since bees don’t have “containers”, once the honey is dry enough, they seal it in by adding a wax cap to the top of the comb. In doing so, they also tell me that the honey is ready. When a frame of honey is all (or almost all) capped, I know it is ready for harvest.
Many beekeepers wait until the end of the honey season and harvest all of the honey at once. But because what is flowering changes as the season progresses, the flavor of the honey changes with the season as well. I enjoy sharing the season’s flavors with my customers, so I start to take honey, in smaller amounts, as soon as it is ready for harvest. As long as I pay attention to the bees, and don’t get in a hurry to have honey, only taking frames that are mostly or fully capped, I know that I will have honey that is just right to pass on to you!
I plan to do another harvest next week. Based on notes I made while pulling those 73 frames last week, I counted about 60 that were “close to ready”. Given the overall warm, sunny weather, and all that is blooming, I am hoping that 60 doesn’t jump to 150, which would be more than a full day’s work with our simple harvesting set up! But I will definitely go out this time prepared for another generous harvest!
