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Monday, November 23, 2015

Flowers and honey


Hive inspections this week and there is plenty of honey. This afternoon's job is honey extraction. That's  a sticky job and lots of handle cranking. I like to extract each hive's honey separately to see if there are any differences. My hive, the pink one, usually has a darker honey with a stronger taste. I'm not a honey lover but it is my favourite honey. Of course.

Our recent foray into mead making looks like a success. The mead taster (not teetotaller me) says it's good but needs some aging. Well it's a way to use any honey we don't consume or sell and I like an experiment.


I'm not surprised that the honey supers are full. There are a lot of flowers and quite a choice for the bees at the moment. There are some eucalypts in flower (the type I have no idea but wish I did), vegetables and ornamentals. Good for the plants and good for the bees.


The first sunflower is open. A volunteer from last year's plants and most welcome.

Lovely little purple flowers on the Purple King bean. They are really nice beans to grow and eat. My only complaint would be that the beans turn green when cooked and don't keep their lovely purple vibrancy.

Tracy

5 comments:

kiwikid said...

Great photo...off to collect the honey!!! You have loads of beautiful flowers for the bees to feast on.

Janice said...

I am always amazed how much more advanced your garden is than ours. Imagine already having a sunflower in bloom. They are such a cheerful part of the garden. Good to hear that your bees are being productive. Hopefully there will be some honey available in March when we are up there. That will come around before we know it.

Unknown said...

Its surprising how much I notice flowers now that we have bees! We have eucalypts flowering now too, and I don't know which is which yet, seems to be a different one every few weeks, makes me realise how much diversity we really have in our area. I would love to read more about how you extract the honey... that's a job we haven't had to do yet!

River said...

I noticed that with my purple king beans too and was disappointed. The taste was still lovely though, there's nothing quite like home grown beans.

Chookyblue...... said...

My honey jar is almost empty..... Hope to get some more from you when that way next it was beautiful......