I made the mistake of not doing an inspection and getting my honey supers onto my bee hives before Summer kicked into full swing. I knew my bees weren’t gonna like it, but I cracked my hives this season anyway🫣. I wanted to see how they were doing in colony size, health, and honey stores. Thankfully, all of my hives were looking good – including the small swarm I caught this Spring. I expect that all the hives will be well-prepared for Winter.

My bees did make it known how dissatisfied they were with my poor time management by stinging me eight good times😅. This was the first time I’d ever been stung by a bee! Ah well🤷🏾‍♀️ I lived to tell the tale AND I got a honey super onto my strongest hive. This means that I can expect a honey harvest early-Winter🤗. This is a HUGE deal for me because once I learned industry practices for “producing” honey, I couldn’t eat that junk anymore🤢. I haven’t had honey in nearly 3 years!

Against all recommendations, I started my apiary with just one hive of feral bees. They had never lived with plastic, been chemically treated for pests, or fed industrially produced supplements. I’m determined to keep it that way. I create an environment as natural as possible for my bees and let them do their thing. To date, I’ve never taken any honey from them because my focus has been to let them build up so that I could naturally expand my apiary.

My one hive of wild bees is now three hives that I plan to turn into six hives next Spring. This approach has required more time and sacrifice (I do miss honey😩), but it’s worth it to me. There’s nowhere that I could even buy the quality of honey that is being produced in my apiary‼️

In preparation for my first honey harvest, I had to get my gear together. I re-purposed two food grade buckets into honey harvest buckets for hauling my raw honey comb from the hives into the house.

I shopped for honey processing buckets and kits, but couldn’t bring myself to give them that much money😓. Instead, I bought a bag of honey gates to make my own honey tap bucket from a re-purposed food grade bucket and purchased minimally essential honey processing tools.

I won’t be harvesting honey until early-November, but I’m excited + ready‼️ I’ll be sure to share the experience with y’all😘