Stony Hill honey
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Our beekeeper, Brandt, cared for the
hives. He attended classes to learn all about caring for
honeybees, collecting the honey and bottling it.
We maintain seven hives of honeybees.
Honeybees are essential for pollinating all of our fruit and
vegetable crops, from apples in the spring to zucchini,
tomatoes and pumpkins in the summer. As an added bonus, we
collect honey twice a year, once in late June and again in late
August.
Honeybees need to visit more than 100
flowers to collect enough nectar. They bring the nectar back to
the hive, where worker bees convert the nectar into honey.
Honey is a simple sugar, which means that it’s more
digestible for bees (and for us), and it’s less likely to
be attacked by bacteria.
After some of the water has evaporated
from the honey, the bees cap off the honeycomb cell with some
wax.
When it’s time to collect the
honey, we gather boxes from the hive. Each box holds 10 frames,
and each box holds about 60 pounds of honey.
The first step is to separate the honey
from the frames. The frames are loaded into the separator and
spun at high speeds. After the honey is separated, it’s
moved to another tank, where it’s pasteurized and then
bottled.
Don’t worry about the
bees—we leave plenty of honey in the hive for the bees to
eat throughout the winter. They have special, larger boxes than
the ones that we collect. Those boxes contain honey only for
the bees’ consumption.
Our Stony Hill honey has been flying
off the shelves. We have a limited quantity, so stop by soon!
