Let the shopping season begin!

When I finish extracting honey and rendering the beeswax I know it is time to get ready for the fall holiday shopping season.

Putting honey in the bottles, labeling and boxing to get ready for events can be a bit boring, but listening to the happy customers when they find out I am truly local makes me happy too. I had a customer recently at the Ridgely Middle School holiday craft fair ask me how many bees are in my hives. His daughter looked up at me with inquisitive eyes and I told them, well I have 10 hives, each hive can have anywhere from 30,000-60,000 bees! They both had wide eyes trying to figure out how many bees that could be.. we all agreed, it was a lot! Then I told them that one honey bee will supply 1/12th of a teaspoon in her lifetime (about 45 days in the summer) Then they look at all the bottles on my table and I tell them that I collected about 500 lbs of honey this season…. It is amazing how hard those little bees work. I try not to waste a drop, I cherish every drop because I know they work so hard.

The beeswax I render from the cappings (the wax the bees use to cap off the honeycomb to store the honey) I use to make my candles and some creams. There is nothing in the hive that goes to waste. If I don’t use all the wax for candles I will use it to coat the frames for next season so they will draw out more honeycomb easier. The young bees will make wax flakes from 6 glands on their bellies. They make the wax from honey. The other bees will take these flakes and will mold them in their mandibles and then start forming the honeycomb on the frames or in the hive. They know precisely the size they need to hold the honey or eggs and baby bees for the queen. All the bees that do all the work in the hive are female! The males are drones and their main purpose is to go out and mate with a queen bee.

So after all the honey is collected, bottled and labeled, and the creams and lotions are made, and the candles are poured it’s time to share the products of the hive to you!

Honey makes great gifts of any kind. House warming, birthdays, get well, and the gift for those you have no idea what to get. The creams and lotions you may have to buy several because once you try them on your hand, face and body you will want to keep them for yourself!

All of our products are sold here on the website or contact me to make a special order. If you came out to the Ridgely Middle holiday craft fair, thank you for stopping by my booth!