A Taste of Honey

This last week has been so busy I hardly had time to post the good news. Yes, you are looking at my first crop of honey. I collected it just over a week ago. It really was an exciting experience. The extraction process was a lot lot easier and less messy then I expected. I was given many good tips by other beekeepers, the most useful one is to have plenty of old newspapers handy to cover my kitchen floor.

This is genuine urban London (E17 to be precise) honey, and it is delicious. I collected just over 20 lb so far. I can't report the exact amount because I don't have a scale big enough to weight it. For the last weeks I have had the first lot of 'Friends of Chi's bees' collecting their first jar of honey. These Friends are people who donated a small amount of cash towards my first hive and had been waiting patiently for their honey. A big thank you for each and every one of them. Don't worry if you are a 'Friend' and you have not had yours yet, I shall be in touch.

In addition to this good news, the colony I hived (see previous posting) at Hv2 is doing well. Very well. Once again my friend Christine came and helped me to inspect the hive. We saw the queen and she is laying nicely. In a week or so there will be a whole lot more bees coming out of that hive. At present I estimate there is about another 30 lb of honey in the two hives. Of course I shall not be taking all of it as I must leave some for the bees for winter. There are now 2 supers on each of the hives and both hives have a near full one and a fairly empty one. So I am expecting another crop for collection before the summer ends. I am looking to get another 2o lb at least for the season, which is modest but good.