Phoenixville Honey

Even bees take a minute to soak up the sunshine on a beautiful afternoon.  We’ve had some remarkably warm days for fall and still no significant rain which means even though the temperatures could support it, nothing was blooming due to the lack of rain and the worsening drought.  It’s not a great situation!  The warm weather means we’ve been able to keep feeding the bees sugar syrup which is pretty crucial since there’s been less (or barely any) fall forage, but they’ve been more active since it’s been warmer which means they need even more food than normal.  It’s incredibly unusual to still have feeders on the hives this close to Thanksgiving.

Speaking of Thanksgiving, we’ve got a bunch of markets over the next week with plenty of opportunities to pick up honey for some honey glazed carrots for your Thanksgiving dinner.

• November 20 – Sip & Shop @ Birchrun Hills Farm, 4-8p
• November 21 – Eagleview, 3-5p
• November 23 – Malvern, 9a-noon
• November 24 – Turkey Fest @ Lundale Farm, 11a-2p
• November 26 – Eagleview Thanksgiving Market, 3-6:30p

Don’t forget to preorder and pick up a turkey at the last two markets – heritage and local/pasture raised are the best turkeys, plus you’ll be supporting small, family farms which makes it taste extra delicious!

Winter is coming.  The bees know it and their beekeeper knows it, so we’re pulling the last of the honey supers (boxes on top that store honey), processing all of that out, and starting all of our prep to make sure we have healthy bees for the winter.  The bees know the daylight is getting shorter, so the queens have slowed down laying, and they’re busy trying to find whatever pollen and nectar is available to bulk themselves up for the coming cold.  My job as a beekeeper is to add supplemental sugar water feed if needed, and it’s always needed, but maybe moreso this year in light of the drought we’ve had end of summer and into fall.  I also run some mite treatments to keep the varroa population down since that’s probably the biggest reason hives fail over the winter.  Varroa bring a bunch of other diseases with them and can weaken the hive to the point that diseases and problems bees may have been able to take care of on their own end up being a death knell for the hive.  It’s a lot of work and worry over the winter, but I do the best I can to keep those bees alive!

We’ve got a bunch of events coming up for October, including a few special events below!  I’m especially excited to join Cynthia Oswald and Jackie Henisee at the Art Work Gallery in Phoenixville where I’ll be offering honey tastings as well as (hopefully) a few extra surprises.  These two artists have put together an incredible show that integrates nature into art and everyday goods that you can use in your home.  Cynthia also interviewed me in the leadup to the show, and you can find that interview here – https://cynthiaoswald.com/phoenixville-honey-a-journey-into-beekeeping-and-art-with-melissa/

Also on deck is the Downingtown Fall Fest which is an incredible event with tons of vendors, food trucks, beverages, and neighbors and friends.  Definitely worth checking that out!

Hope to see you this fall! I also got a chance to update the honey guide, and our full schedule through the end of December is online. Keep an eye out for changes at the end of October since Mr. Phoenixville Honey may finally be home from being at sea all year and we may try to sneak off for a vacation then.  Don’t worry, I’ll reschedule those markets and will post notice on Instagram and the website of any changes to the schedule.

As we’re getting into September already, the bees are starting their fall prep and so is their beekeeper!  I’ll be working this month to pull the last boxes of honey off the hives as our bloom periods start to wrap up.  The honey coming in this month will be made from the nectar that comes from Asters, Japanese Knotweed, clematis, goldenrod, and maybe a little spotted lanternfly honeydew.  The flavor is richer, almost like maple syrup, molasses, and brown sugar.  You can see above that the bees have still been filling frames with capped honey, but it’s definitely at a slower pace than we see in the spring and summer.  Overall this season has been a bit of a struggle with the weather – it was always too hot, too dry, to wet, too cold, and nothing seemed to go right to make this a good honey season.  It’s probably just a little below average, but last year was so above average, it’s hard to see so much less after a year with so much more.

We’ve got LOTS of markets on deck for the fall, and you can find all of those dates through December here.  Our annual sampler box should be ready for sale by October and always makes for a great gift.  We’ll have some new beeswax candles and a new tea towel design too.  Looking forward to the fall and getting our bees happy and healthy and ready for the winter!

We’re already well into our honey season, working through batch letter H already.  Our batches are separated by date and location, and through the early parts of the season, I’m pulling a batch of honey pretty much every week.  Batches range between about 30-70+ pounds, and I enjoy seeing the differences between each batch as the season changes, and the small differences even between locations in the same week depending on what’s blooming and where.  This season hasn’t been as stellar as last year since our black locust tree bloom was wiped out due to bad weather (cold and rain) and the trees outside my home didn’t even bother blooming this year at all.  Black Locust trees are generally one of our biggest spring nectar producers, so that’s a huge disappointment.  Now we’re into the middle of June and seeing a dramatic slowdown when clover nectar should be rolling in, but the forecast holds a week of 90 degree temperatures and we’ve had very little rain.  The bees still seem to be pretty happy and healthy otherwise, but it feels like we’re into mid July instead of just halfway through June.  Fingers crossed for a little more rain though – we could all use it!

I did finally update all of last year’s honey guide which you can find here, and I’ve added the first five batches of spring honey to the guide for this year.  I also finally got last year’s class photo together and put together some statistics.  In total, we bottled 2,252 pounds of honey.  Yep, just over a whole actual ton by weight.  That 2,252 lbs is split over 39 unique batches, so we went through the whole alphabet once and doubled letters up through LL plus the End of Season batch. Last year was just a phenomenal year for honey production!  I don’t think this year will even come close, but I’m pretty proud of the work the bees and I did last year to get all of that done.  We took in 214 jar returns through last season which amounts to just shy of 18 cases of jars and saved me a whole trip out to pick up more jars.  Honestly, I’ve never been so proud of my customers for embracing the jar return program, saving fuel to pick up new jars, and reducing the energy it costs to haul away recycling and re-make a perfectly good glass jar.  It’s the whole reason we bottle only in glass since it’s nearly infinitely reusable.  Anyway, here’s to another sweet year!

Spring is hitting early again this year, so we’re gearing up for our first batch of honey for 2024 to come off the hives in the next 2-3 weeks or so.  The hives are growing taller every week, just like these hives at the Reservoir Park in Phoenixville.  Over the winter, with the help of Trellis who manages the Community Garden in Phoenixville, we got a new fenced-in space together just behind the garden so the hives are in a sunny spot and away from the new walking path.  I still have to get together my end of season wrap-up for the 2023 season, so hopefully I can get that done before the new honey starts pouring in off the hives!  I’m also aiming to get a monthly update on the website here to keep things more current.  I do more regular updates on Instagram, but not everyone does social media, so you can subscribe to the website updates here in the bar on the right side and get an email every time there’s a new post.  Here’s to another sweet year!

I realized I hadn’t posted an update in quite a while, but, I’m here now!  This season has been a little bit of a roller-coaster.  We started REMARKABLY early this year with our first honey coming off the hives on May 14th, a good 2-3 weeks earlier than years prior.  This is now my 9th season of beekeeping and I can’t recall having honey available quite that early before.  After a mild winter, the natural attrition of the hive population just didn’t dip as far as it usually does, so there were more bees to start the season off and boy were they ready when spring kicked off early.  We had a very dry May but groundwater was still high enough to support the trees, so with a good Black Locust bloom and a lengthy stretch of honeysuckle bloom, the spring honey poured in off the hives nonstop.  Now it’s August, and usually we see a nectar dearth in July and August, but so far, after 5 inches of rain in July and already over an inch for August (with lots more forecast for this week alone), so the honey just keeps coming in.  More rain means more things bloom and for longer – I’ve even seen honeysuckle making quite a comeback this week.  July and August so far have been slower on honey production than May and June, but definitely more than the slight trickle I’m used to seeing this time of year.

That spring honey is just absolutely gorgeous this year, by the way.  Definitely give it a try if you haven’t had some before!  I’m a little behind at updating the Honey Guide for this year, but we already tore through the whole alphabet once and have started running double letters if that’s any indication of how things are going!  The guide is a great way to get more detail about your honey including tasting notes and possible sources.  While I consider all of my honey “Wildflower honey” since I never get a true varietal, I at least take a guess on what the content is based on what was blooming.  Occasionally a frame from May sticks around in the hive, half-capped, through September, so I’m not comfortable saying, “This is definitely all honeysuckle honey,” when it could contain honey from dozens upon dozens of different flowers throughout the season.  Personally, I think it’s neat to have so many different floral sources combine to make a honey that will never, ever be made again because you can’t possibly capture that blend ever again.  Our small batch processing, pulling honey about every week in roughly 5 gallon batches means each batch (indicated by a letter on the label) is truly unique.  Visit us at a market and grab a jar for yourself!

Our honey season is officially over and we’ve got the results of the whole year in one photo.  We harvest honey on a weekly, running basis, so every week and location pretty much gets its own batch.  A batch is usually somewhere between 30-70 lbs of honey, and I keep all the 4 locations separate from each other, so you can really see the tiny changes that happen location to location and week to week as different flowers are blooming.  We’ve got a guide linked here that goes over when the honey came off the hives, from which apiary, and some basic tasting notes and possible floral sources.  All of our honeys are pretty much wildflower honeys since we don’t move our hives for pollination services – the bees find what they find and I’ve got very little say in which flowers they visit.  I usually have a good idea of what’s blooming when, so I can usually tell what the major floral source is, but the rest can be quite the toss up!  In general the flavors run from a very mild, light, honey with delicate floral notes, to a classic wildflower/clover honey in the middle of the season, and then notes of molasses, maple syrup, and malt work in towards late summer and early fall.

In the photo above:

• Top Row: Batches A through E
• Row 2: Batches F through K
• Row 3: Batches L through Q
• Row 4: Batches R through W
• Bottom Row: Batches X – EE with BB and DD stacked on the side

We also had a few good batches of Spotted Lanternfly honey!  What?!  Yes.  A destructive and invasive pest, the spotted lanternfly is a sap sucker.  It filters out the amino acids from tree sap which means its waste product, called honeydew, is essentially sugar water (it’s complicated because it’s not really ‘waste’ as we think of waste – their ‘digestive’ system runs like a filter on a high pressure fire hose – they filter out the amino acids and let the sugar and water pass through at rates up to their whole body weight in one hour because of the high pressure of the sap in the tree [yep, more than you ever wanted to know about bug digestion!]).  You’ll see a sticky residue underneath a tree infested with spotted lanternflies, and sometimes you can even see it raining under the tree.  That’s all just sugar water, and of course Spotted Lanternfly infestations peak at their adult stage in the end of July, typically when we have a slow down or stoppage (dearth) in nectar production from flowers due to summer hot and dry weather.  Naturally, the bees collect it and bring it home, turning it into honey just like they would with flower nectar.  The resulting honey is dark, richly flavored with notes of molasses, malt, and maple syrup, and has a touch of a smoky note.  It’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but I love pairing it with blue cheese or making a simple syrup (half honey, half water, leave it in the fridge overnight) for cocktails like an Old Fashioned.  Throughout the world, honey bees get up to the same mischief with other sap sucking bugs’ honeydew, from aphids to scale insects and some moths and caterpillars as well, so this is nothing new!

What a year it’s been!  I’ll have some end of year statistics coming up in the next post, including data on how many jar returns we’ve had over the year!  Remember, you can always return your empty jar to be sanitized and used again.  It’s exactly why we use glass – it’s nearly infinitely reusable, and the world doesn’t need more plastic.

I love doing this in the beginning half of the year to see how the colors (and flavors) shift and change as time goes on.  While there are very subtle color and flavor shifts in the early part of the season, it’s that dramatic jump from the pale yellow to a gorgeous mid-amber color that happens mid July, probably due to our last big tree bloom, the Sumac.  Of course, there are a lot of other flower sources mixed in since our bees aren’t moved for pollination services, but one tree can hold thousands of flowers while one backyard garden with wildflowers might have a few hundred which is why trees make our biggest nectar producers.  Don’t get me wrong, the flowers you plant to help bees absolutely help our native bees and honey bees as well and are 100% important!  While an individual backyard of flowers might not be a major nectar producer, hundreds of backyards can combine to make an impact on honey production and supply pollen to raise the next generation of pollinators.

Now that we’re done processing through Batch N, we updated the honey guide (link here) which is now current through Batch N with photos.  The batch letter on the lid of your jar will let you know when the honey was extracted, the location of the hives, and a few notes on the content and flavor.  It’s also pretty fun to see the batches all lined up as the season goes on.  I typically only bring 4-5 batches to a market, so if you have one you absolutely need to try, send me a message via the About Us page to let me know!

Join us on Wednesday, June 22, 2022 (rain date June 23rd) at 6pm at the Reservoir Park in Phoenixville for a fun pollinator week event! Combining all things Phoenixville, the event will feature a talk about pollinators while you enjoy a meal or snack, and we’ll even have an art activity to round out the Adult Summer Camp vibe.

Bring dinner or a snack – show off your cheese board skills or grab takeout from one of our fantastic local restaurants. Don’t forget the picnic blanket or folding chairs!

The art activity will involve making your artistic mark on a beehive box. We’ll have two freshly painted, plain white beehive boxes ready for you to paint, doodle or draw on, or even add a few lines of poetry to as a collaborative community art piece. We’ll have some art supplies available, but feel free to bring your favorite tools or mediums. The finished boxes will later be installed on the beehives at the community garden in the Reservoir Park.

Can’t wait to see you and celebrate the buzz about pollinators!

For more information about pollinators and other events, check out pollinator.org

Long time, no blog!  Well, we’re already jumped forward to spring of 2022!  The bees are gearing up for summer, increasing their population size and they’re already starting to stack away some nectar which means they’re collecting more than they’re using to generate brood right now.  We’re just about on the same track as last year in terms of weather, so we should have our first batches of honey available at the end of May or early June.  The dandelions are popping up all over the place and the bees are enjoying some sunny days and warmer weather.

Just a short update to say hey, we’re still here, the bees are still buzzing and we should have honey within the month.  Hope to see you out at a market soon!!