Our Second Honey Harvest

The second harvest of honey was not quite like the first. There was plenty of honey, 19 lbs of it actually. It was much darker than the first batch and has a different aroma, not as sweet and mouth watering as you would have expected.

We’ve decided not to sell it.

Its not the standard or expected product and a taste test solidified that. I don't want to have an inconsistent product and so we decided we can make use of it in other ways and turned it into an opportunity. 

It's so interesting that the honey this hive is from is next to the other hive. The only difference is that they arrived on the farm at different times. The first hive had access to the orchard blossoms where the second came a week or two after the apple blossoms were done. Here’s a comparison:

This is just a difference in the grade of the honey. Definitely not what we expected as first time beekeepers, but kind of cool. It’s pushed us to pursue some other plans that we had put on the back burner. 

We’ve been making soaps, candles and lip balm as we discover recipes and learn the benefits of different oil blends. To start, we began researching various oil blends and additives, with a focus of course on Honey. Other by-products or herbs that have been available on the farm throughout the summer also made the list of recipes to focus on. 

Honey is surprisingly a spare additive in many recipes and so a little bit is going to go a long way for us. With 19lbs to get through, we have a lot of experimenting to do!

We decided our strategy to learn was to dive in by focusing on a few recipes and techniques rather than going broad. I had previously taken Cold Process Soap making courses so I decided to focus there where mike wanted to stay focused on bees specifically and selected beeswax candles. 

Our experiments have kicked off and we’ll be sharing progress through our Instagram stories!