When my boys approached me about beekeeping in the spring, I was dubious. Eventually, I agreed with the caveat that I couldn’t help (since I’m blind) and Dad probably wasn’t helping either (because he’s uncomfortable around the bees.) With that understanding, my sons still wanted to proceed into the world of beekeeping, and three months later, we experienced our first honey harvest.
There are so many things to learn when you’re a new beekeeper, but perhaps the most fascinating aspect of it all is the fact that honey from different bee colonies in the same town or county can taste very different. We’re very blessed to have some amazing bee mentors, and one of them helped us with our first honey harvest. Another one of the mentors had told us that our honey would likely taste like blackberries because of the sheer number of blackberries on the property, but I wasn’t prepared for how true that guess turned out to be.
My son and one of our bee mentors from Liberty Honey Products pulled frames in mid August. Our bees had packed one “super” (a medium box meant for honey), so we ended up with about 32lb of the most amazing blackberry honey I’ve ever tasted! It really tasted like the bees had made the honey from wild blackberry juice!
We still have another super that is yet to be harvested. It’s completely packed with honey but it hasn’t been capped yet. I’m not sure how long capping will take. I’ll have to ask my bee mentors, but all things considered, we’re incredibly excited about the endeavor that we weren’t certain we were undertaking back in April!