Sunday, July 20, 2014

Harvest

We brought in our honey today. And yesterday. 

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That bucket? That´s 27 kg honey. 27 freakin´ kilogram.Twice as much as our first harvest, a couple of weeks ago.

We worked both today and yesterday, and work it was, it was hot, around 30 °C, and the bees weren´t really happy being robbed this time - that´s normal, because they feel winter is coming, so they want to keep what they´ve worked for. I got stung, and my left hand is still swollen. I guess wearing gloves is a good idea, but I can feel more without, so I usually go without gloves... and the hand isn´t so bad.

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I´ve also harvested some of the wax - I melted the empty honeycombs in a pot, and strained it all through some pantyhose. Now I´ve got lots of good, almost white way I can use as an excellent base for creams and soaps.

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The honey we got this time tasted surprisingly really different to the one from 6 weeks before - our new honey has a very distinct herbal aroma which tastes really rich - I trace it back to the blossom of our oregano:

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Oregano grows like mad in our garden, and the bees love it. So I suppose we´ve got oregano honey now, I bet that´s rare :) But very, very delicious. It´s also a little more clear, and less golden than the one we harvested before.

The reason we´re harvesting our honey now is that we need to do the varroa prevention around this time of year, which means that we have to work with acid. And we don´t want our honey to be spoiled by that procedure, so we take the honey away first. And we´ve got to get i
 done before we go on vacation, which is - oops! next week.

Our kitchen is still slightly sticky, and we have yet to fill it in glasses,and we´re tired, but I like working sied by side with Tim. We also harvested our pears, and apples, which will give some nice fresh juice tonight, and blackberries, oh so many blackberries, which I´ve cooked into jam.

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One twig of our pear tree broke off, so we could pick pears in the kitchen. Awesome!

Music for today is:

I know I´m posting way too much Ed Sheeran, but I´m listening to that album all around the clock right now, and I find something beautiful I hadn´t heard before every time again.
This must be the most beautiful dementia-related love song in the world. Very, very sweet.

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