July has been a busy month. We have extracted and bottled over 800 pounds of honey, packaged 45 sections “Ross Round” comb honey, and processed 35 pounds of beeswax. Still on our list for the festival making some beeswax taper candles, beeswax lip balm, and producing some baked goods with our honey.
We are also entering our honey in the Fairfax 4-H Club’s open division honey show. We will have entries for extracted and comb honey this year.
In the apiary, the bees are doing well despite the heat. If you were to visit them you would see many bees on he outside of the hive . It looks like this:
What the bees are doing is cooling the hive. They do this by having some of the bees sit outside to open up space so that the colony can better ventilate the hive. Unless it remains hot, they go inside at night.
Is the honey for sale raw honey?
Yes Nicole, the honey is “Raw”. We strain our honey through a fine mesh before bottling only. You will find that it has some pollen, and wax that will float to the top when the honey sets. It appears a small bit of foam in the jars. The benefit of this sort of minimal processing is that it preserves the floral smell and taste that is otherwise partially removed with warming and filtering that is typical of commercial processing.