On Balanced Environments Old Mill Creek property sit three busy bee hives maintained by Hamilton Honey.
Honey harvesting is a mid to late summer event at BEI. The bee keepers try to take the honey before cool nights set in and the bees become more protective of their honey supply.
Bees do not like the smell of a cherry scented lid the bee keepers use to cover the hives for a few minutes. In this time the bees crawl deeper into the hives and away from the layer the keepers will harvest.
The bees “glue” all of the hive trays together with a resin like material called propolis. Bees use it to build hives, and it is made from the buds of poplar and cone bearing trees.
The harvesters pry apart the propolis to pull out the full trays of fresh honey. They carefully brush all of the bees off of the trays and load the honey ladened inserts into their vehicle for a drive to their state-of-the-art extraction kitchen.
A European scoring machine is used to open the individual honey comb cells and then each tray is put into a centrifuge to extract the liquid honey.
Fresh jars of Hamilton Honey are then bottled in small and large sizes and labeled for BEI use.
Do you have a jar of BEI Honey? If not, ask your account rep for a delicious jar of organic honey from the BEI Old Mill Creek hives!
We were brave and visited the bees for last week’s harvest.
Watch this really fun and informative video on BEI honey harvesting!
