It's an exciting time of year for beekeepers
We can finally harvest the honey our ladies have been working on since the spring. Depending on the production level of our bees, honey can be harvested throughout the late summer and early fall. Honeybees, when provided with the proper space and conditions, make more honey than they need. Beekeepers encourage this with the use of “honey supers”, which are the boxes you see stacked on top of many hive boxes. But don’t worry, we are always careful to leave our hives with enough food to get them through the winter.
The Harvesting Process
Before harvesting the honey from a super we want to carefully remove as many honeybees as possible. This can be done with a variety of tools and techniques, depending on the beekeeper’s preference. My preferred method is using a Quebec Bee Escape Board. This usually gets approximately 95% of the bees out of the honey super. It's a passive way to separate the bees from the honey super as the bees are able to exit but cannot get back in. Once we have moved the honeybees, we can extract the honey.
Cooking with Infused Honeys
Now that we have harvested our honey, it’s time to put it to use! We love cooking with honey (or drizzling it on everything). Try pairing honey with local seasonal vegetables. Drizzle roast squash or corn on the cob with our new Pure Honey with Hot Peppers & Orange for the perfect sweet and spicy finish.
That’s right, we are launching infused honeys and we are so excited to share them with you. We have been perfecting our recipes this year and we will be sharing more flavours soon. In the meantime, try our Pure Honey with Hot Peppers & Orange which combines the sweetness of honey with the warmth of Carolina ghost peppers, chipotle peppers, and a hint of bright oranges to round it out.
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