Hi Everyone!

Great news, we have finally harvested, extracted, and bottled the honey that the bees have been making over the past five months. It’s been a long process; the bees begin to forage again once flowers have started blooming, and the temperature has started to rise. This normally happens around mid March.

After they become active, they get checked on about once a week, to make sure all is in working order, and there’s nothing wrong with the hive (parasites, not enough food, not enough room). This year we had problems with hive space, our eight hives were expanding quickly and swarming often. Swarming occurs when there is not enough room for all the bees in the hive, so half leave with the old queen to try and find a new home. These bees are docile, having gorged on honey before taking flight, and can easily be recaptured and put back into a new hive. With the bee population exploding we knew that we’d have a lot of honey this year.

Over the course of two days, we managed to extract all the honey that was made over the spring. We filled around nine 5-gallon buckets. We have yet to bottle and label all of it, but that will be done soon. Right now, we have around three boxes of honey, with more to come. Our prices are staying the same at $10 a pound, and $6 for a half pound. If you want to buy some you can contact me at oliver@essexgirlhoney.com , or my home phone 973-744-0701.

Oliver