After the long winter with so much snow, our bees are happy it’s spring. They are growing their colonies and bringing in pollen. So much pollen.
If you have spring allergies, we don’t have to tell you! Lots of folks feel local honey helps their allergies and are connecting for curb-side pick up of our delicious raw honey. Get in touch!
It turned out to be a very productive Spring. With good weather and a long-lasting nectar flow, the hives built up very quickly and were really productive making delicious light, floral honey.
We extracted honey in July. After letting the honey settle for a couple of weeks, it’s now in bottles and ready to share. As always, we provide contactless pick-up–just let us know how much honey you want and when you’ll pick it up. To make it even easier, we now accept payment by Venmo and other similar payment apps.
We have had some email problems, but I hope they’re fixed for good. If you send an email that doesn’t get a response, please call us at 973.744.0701.
The bees don’t know anything about COVID-19 and are doing their thing–no social distancing in the hive while they bring in the nectar and make honey.
We have honey available and will harvest 2020 spring honey in a few weeks!
If you’ve been trying to email us with no answer, please call 973.744.0701–our web hosting site has been having intermittent email problems!
Can it be that Spring is around the corner? The weather keeps us guessing, but any day now! Along with warmer weather and sun come flowers–and seasonal allergies.
If you use local honey to treat your allergies, just get in touch–we’ve got plenty of local, Montclair honey!
If you’re looking for a local holiday gift that says “Montclair” or even “New Jersey” think about our local honey. We have both spring and fall honey available. The spring honey is a light, fragrant wildflower honey. The honey from the fall is dark, rich and tasty. Both are raw, unfiltered, made and extracted right here in Montclair.
The end of summer is closing in, and our bees have been busy. We had a nice spring harvest, with much of our raw, local honey already in bottles. The Japanese bamboo and goldenrod is just starting to bloom in this area, so we have hopes for dark honey in the fall.
The big change at the hive is that Oliver has gone off to college, so I’ll be recruiting our younger son to help with the honey. We’ll have some new contact info set up soon, but for now, just call or email oliver@essexgirlhoney.com as usual, and we’ll get back to you!
We’ve neglected updating the site for a while (okay, for over a year), but the bees have been busy, nonetheless.
Way back in February 2015, we attended the New Jersey Honey Show where our honey in the comb won a blue ribbon plus “best of division” for combs and spreads. We’ll be doing this kind of honey again in 2016.
We also won second place in the novelty wax category–with a block of wax in the shape of Han Solo in carbonite. Unfortunately, no photos exist.
Recently, we were able to produce honey in the comb using a system called Ross Rounds. This is a tricky, time-consuming process. We have to coax the bees to draw out new wax and fill it with honey very quickly right in the packaging–our timing must be perfect or it doesn’t work.
While this type of comb honey used to be very popular, not that many beekeepers in NJ bother with it. In fact, we’re not aware of anywhere else locally where you can buy Ross Rounds.
The bees fill our Ross Rounds with light, spring honey contained in thin, edible wax that you can scoop out and eat on toast, in yogurt, or on a spoon. This is honey in a “native” state–just as the bees made it, completely raw and unprocessed.
A limited number of 8 oz Rounds are available at $8. We’ll happily give you a $1 credit on your next purchase when you return the empty packaging.
Email Oliver to order or for more info.
Believe it or not, Spring is here. Already our bees are bringing in bright yellow pollen along with darker yellow and light brown. Hard to know where it’s coming from, but in NJ the first blooming plants are skunk cabbage and spice bush followed closely by maple, hazel, and elms. The NJ beekeepers association has a handy pollen calendar here.
Many of our customers are looking for local, raw honey to help prevent seasonal allergies. According to healthline, medical studies are inconclusive, but if it works for you or your family, then it’s a pretty tasty remedy (though honey should never be given to infants or toddlers under the age of one).
Here’s hoping the snow ends and we can all enjoy a proper Spring–free of allergies!
We just got back from the 2014 NJ State Honey Show where the honey we extracted on June 9th from our Edgemont hives won 1st place in the “black box” category! At these types of shows, judges consider a wide range of criteria for most honey categories–some of which are only about packaging or ability to fill multiple bottles to the same level. The black box category is only about taste, aroma, and texture–what really matters to most people.
Given all the great beekeeping going on, I don’t know if we can say we have the best-tasting honey in New Jersey, but we know we have blue ribbon flavor!
