I have been removing honey supers from the hives and extracting golden honey! It is a sticky job, but the smell of the honey fills the barn and I enjoy the sweet rewards! I am amazed at the amount of work it takes a hive of bees to make all the honey that pours from my extractor. I extracted about 300 pounds of honey recently. I did it by myself and got it done in a few hours. As I watch the honey pour into buckets I can’t help but think of the workload it took for the bees to make each drop.
It is said that honey bees must visit 2 million flowers and travel over 50,000 miles just to make one pound of honey and in a bee’s lifetime each one will only produce 1/2 of a teaspoon of honey. In the height of summer, the number of bees in each hive is around 80,000, plenty of workers to help get the job done, but the numbers are staggering! Luckily the farm and surrounding river valley is full of wildflowers that produce plenty of nectar! It is truly amazing.
