Update to the Lake Martin Honey Extraction

Extracting the honey for the Logan Martin Lake Home hive cut-out took 5 days because of the crush and strain method. Once the honey was strained a second straining was performed to remove any remaining defects. 

Honey cut out yields 30.5 lbs.

The honey sits for a few days the air bubbles rise and any heavy debris settles. Once this occurs bottling is possible. Fortunately, before I delivered the honey to the Johnson's, a jar was entered into our local club's honey contest and specifically the Black Jar category. This category is for taste purposes only. There are other categories but this one, I felt was best suited for this category. This is the first time we had a contest of this type.

Lynne Kelton, owner of Lookout Mountain Honey Bees and a certified Welsh Honey judge from the University of Georgia/Young Harris College Bee Institute performed our annual contest. This was the first for us having a certified judge. After judging occurred, it received a First Place ribbon for best taste of contest.

Lynne Kelton, Welsh Honey Judge

First Place - Black Jar Category

This honey is very thick, sticky and a has a deep flavor unlike some of the early season Langstroth Hives already extracted this season. This honey unlike a maintained hive is free of any human intervention and any obvious applied chemicals.

Honey Extracting

It's the time of year where you ask yourself is the honey ready? Beekeepers all across the area who have been monitoring their hives closely will be able to answer that question fairly easy. Honey bees draw out the comb in their frames and then we add add another super so they can do it again in hope they will fill it with honey and capped it. When they do this, we consider they honey ripe and ready for removal. Until then, it's not ready and they wait continues throughout the days and weeks ahead.

New frame, new foundation.

This honey looks almost clear....amazing!

The spinning honey extractor holds 4 frames.

Exercises outside today!