honey

When we left for the boat the first time Braden left three bee hives. After that winter only one of them survived. Last summer he didn't do very much with them and we didn't get any honey.

This summer that one hive is still kicking. We had been out of honey for a long time, so when we got back in June he put in a bunch of frames so we could get some.

By July they had filled just about every inch of all ten frames. It was so much honey it almost filled my 5 gallon honey bucket to the top.

When we were all done we had a little over 40 lbs of honey.

Now that cooler weather is coming it was time to get one last batch of honey from the bees before winter.

This is the first time ever that we had bees come to eat the honey as we were getting it off the frames. It all started out with this one bee.

Clearly she told her friends because about 30 minutes later there were probably thousands of bees.

By the time we finished our driveway was covered in bees that had way too much honey to eat. When it got dark and they took off back to their hive for the night we cleaned up, but this morning they were back looking for more.

This time we got 35 lbs of honey.

I love seeing how different the honey is depending on when you get it. Both of these bottles are from the same hive, in the same location. The one on the left is the honey we got in July. It is a lot darker and a lot thicker. The one on the right is the honey we just got in October. It is a lot sweeter.

Fun fact for Austin - the color of the honey is determined by the type of flower that the bees use to collect nectar, so the honey will be different colors in different seasons depending on what flowers are in bloom.