Phoenixville Honey

Spring has really jumped into full gear VERY quickly this year!  We’re probably running 2 weeks ahead of what’s been about average for the last few years.  The bees have been working hard filling frames with nectar from honeysuckle and black locust mostly, but with everything blooming all at once, it’s probably a pretty wide mixture of nectars.  Because this spring has been so odd, most of my honey boxes on the hives look like this – full of nectar, but nothing capped off as honey.  Beekeepers can do the “shake test” which is when we shake a frame with the cells facing down to see if anything falls out.  If liquid drops out, it’s still too wet to be honey.  If nothing drops out, it may be cured down to about 16-18% moisture which is what we want to see for honey.  I can double check using a refractometer to be absolutely sure it’s cured down to honey before pulling it off the hive which is what I’ll be doing next week since these bees don’t seem to want to cap off anything!  And this isn’t at just one apiary location either – all of them seem to be doing the same thing this spring.  My best guess is that the nectar is coming in so fast, they’re focusing energy on evaporating out the water and aren’t bothering to cap it off yet since humidity has been relatively low and it’s not necessary just yet.  Every season is always so different than the others!

Coming up, I’ll be returning to markets at the end of May starting with the Eagleview Farmers Market on May 28th from 3-6pm.  A full schedule is available here.  I’ve missed being at markets all winter long, so it’ll be great to be back!  Hope to see you there!

Spring is here and it seems to have ramped up to full swing rather quickly!  Temperatures this upcoming week are forecast to be close to 90 which is absolutely bananas.  I made it through the winter with 3 losses out of 16 hives – one was expected since they just failed repeatedly to get a mated queen and thrive all summer long.  The above photo shows a strong hive with a BEAUTIFUL brood pattern.  The frame is edge-to-edge capped brood (pupae under the wax cap, much like a caterpillar cocoon), showing we have a strong queen laying in a good pattern, a strong hive, and enough food coming in to support raising that much brood.  Love to see it!

Coming up, we’ll be at the Earth Day celebration in Phoenixville at Reservoir Park, Saturday April 18 from 12-4pm talking all things bees and pollinators.  I’m still sold out of honey probably till the end of May, but definitely stop by to say hello and ask your bee questions!

Better late than never, right?  Our total for the 2024 season came out to 1,339 lbs of honey over 28 unique batches.  Each batch consists of roughly a week or two of honey from a single location.  If you want to learn more about the batch of honey you brought home, pop over to our honey guide to learn more!  While this is MUCH lower than 2023’s season, I know that a bunch of factors were against us last year from a rainy and cold spring, a nearly non-existent black locust bloom, and then a pretty awful drought in the fall.  Each year is a different year, so we can only hope that 2025 turns out better.  On top of honey production, our jar return program received 338 jars to be reused!  This means there are 28 cases of jars that didn’t have to be hauled away, sorted, crushed, melted, and formed into the same jar again.  Glass is almost infinitely reusable so it makes sense to save the environmental cost of making the exact same jar when the current one is perfectly reusable.  It’s a HUGE deal to me and you all deserve a round of applause for dutifully bringing back those empties!

Our 2025 season is kicking off already and it’s delightful to be back working the hives every week after a long (and very cold) winter.  Things are looking good so far, so we should see our first batches of honey in the next 4 weeks or so.  Looking forward to sharing another sweet year with you all!

Even bees take a minute to soak up the sunshine on a beautiful afternoon.  We’ve had some remarkably warm days for fall and still no significant rain which means even though the temperatures could support it, nothing was blooming due to the lack of rain and the worsening drought.  It’s not a great situation!  The warm weather means we’ve been able to keep feeding the bees sugar syrup which is pretty crucial since there’s been less (or barely any) fall forage, but they’ve been more active since it’s been warmer which means they need even more food than normal.  It’s incredibly unusual to still have feeders on the hives this close to Thanksgiving.

Speaking of Thanksgiving, we’ve got a bunch of markets over the next week with plenty of opportunities to pick up honey for some honey glazed carrots for your Thanksgiving dinner.

• November 20 – Sip & Shop @ Birchrun Hills Farm, 4-8p
• November 21 – Eagleview, 3-5p
• November 23 – Malvern, 9a-noon
• November 24 – Turkey Fest @ Lundale Farm, 11a-2p
• November 26 – Eagleview Thanksgiving Market, 3-6:30p

Don’t forget to preorder and pick up a turkey at the last two markets – heritage and local/pasture raised are the best turkeys, plus you’ll be supporting small, family farms which makes it taste extra delicious!

Winter is coming.  The bees know it and their beekeeper knows it, so we’re pulling the last of the honey supers (boxes on top that store honey), processing all of that out, and starting all of our prep to make sure we have healthy bees for the winter.  The bees know the daylight is getting shorter, so the queens have slowed down laying, and they’re busy trying to find whatever pollen and nectar is available to bulk themselves up for the coming cold.  My job as a beekeeper is to add supplemental sugar water feed if needed, and it’s always needed, but maybe moreso this year in light of the drought we’ve had end of summer and into fall.  I also run some mite treatments to keep the varroa population down since that’s probably the biggest reason hives fail over the winter.  Varroa bring a bunch of other diseases with them and can weaken the hive to the point that diseases and problems bees may have been able to take care of on their own end up being a death knell for the hive.  It’s a lot of work and worry over the winter, but I do the best I can to keep those bees alive!

We’ve got a bunch of events coming up for October, including a few special events below!  I’m especially excited to join Cynthia Oswald and Jackie Henisee at the Art Work Gallery in Phoenixville where I’ll be offering honey tastings as well as (hopefully) a few extra surprises.  These two artists have put together an incredible show that integrates nature into art and everyday goods that you can use in your home.  Cynthia also interviewed me in the leadup to the show, and you can find that interview here – https://cynthiaoswald.com/phoenixville-honey-a-journey-into-beekeeping-and-art-with-melissa/

Also on deck is the Downingtown Fall Fest which is an incredible event with tons of vendors, food trucks, beverages, and neighbors and friends.  Definitely worth checking that out!

Hope to see you this fall! I also got a chance to update the honey guide, and our full schedule through the end of December is online. Keep an eye out for changes at the end of October since Mr. Phoenixville Honey may finally be home from being at sea all year and we may try to sneak off for a vacation then.  Don’t worry, I’ll reschedule those markets and will post notice on Instagram and the website of any changes to the schedule.

As we’re getting into September already, the bees are starting their fall prep and so is their beekeeper!  I’ll be working this month to pull the last boxes of honey off the hives as our bloom periods start to wrap up.  The honey coming in this month will be made from the nectar that comes from Asters, Japanese Knotweed, clematis, goldenrod, and maybe a little spotted lanternfly honeydew.  The flavor is richer, almost like maple syrup, molasses, and brown sugar.  You can see above that the bees have still been filling frames with capped honey, but it’s definitely at a slower pace than we see in the spring and summer.  Overall this season has been a bit of a struggle with the weather – it was always too hot, too dry, to wet, too cold, and nothing seemed to go right to make this a good honey season.  It’s probably just a little below average, but last year was so above average, it’s hard to see so much less after a year with so much more.

We’ve got LOTS of markets on deck for the fall, and you can find all of those dates through December here.  Our annual sampler box should be ready for sale by October and always makes for a great gift.  We’ll have some new beeswax candles and a new tea towel design too.  Looking forward to the fall and getting our bees happy and healthy and ready for the winter!

We’re already well into our honey season, working through batch letter H already.  Our batches are separated by date and location, and through the early parts of the season, I’m pulling a batch of honey pretty much every week.  Batches range between about 30-70+ pounds, and I enjoy seeing the differences between each batch as the season changes, and the small differences even between locations in the same week depending on what’s blooming and where.  This season hasn’t been as stellar as last year since our black locust tree bloom was wiped out due to bad weather (cold and rain) and the trees outside my home didn’t even bother blooming this year at all.  Black Locust trees are generally one of our biggest spring nectar producers, so that’s a huge disappointment.  Now we’re into the middle of June and seeing a dramatic slowdown when clover nectar should be rolling in, but the forecast holds a week of 90 degree temperatures and we’ve had very little rain.  The bees still seem to be pretty happy and healthy otherwise, but it feels like we’re into mid July instead of just halfway through June.  Fingers crossed for a little more rain though – we could all use it!

I did finally update all of last year’s honey guide which you can find here, and I’ve added the first five batches of spring honey to the guide for this year.  I also finally got last year’s class photo together and put together some statistics.  In total, we bottled 2,252 pounds of honey.  Yep, just over a whole actual ton by weight.  That 2,252 lbs is split over 39 unique batches, so we went through the whole alphabet once and doubled letters up through LL plus the End of Season batch. Last year was just a phenomenal year for honey production!  I don’t think this year will even come close, but I’m pretty proud of the work the bees and I did last year to get all of that done.  We took in 214 jar returns through last season which amounts to just shy of 18 cases of jars and saved me a whole trip out to pick up more jars.  Honestly, I’ve never been so proud of my customers for embracing the jar return program, saving fuel to pick up new jars, and reducing the energy it costs to haul away recycling and re-make a perfectly good glass jar.  It’s the whole reason we bottle only in glass since it’s nearly infinitely reusable.  Anyway, here’s to another sweet year!

Spring is hitting early again this year, so we’re gearing up for our first batch of honey for 2024 to come off the hives in the next 2-3 weeks or so.  The hives are growing taller every week, just like these hives at the Reservoir Park in Phoenixville.  Over the winter, with the help of Trellis who manages the Community Garden in Phoenixville, we got a new fenced-in space together just behind the garden so the hives are in a sunny spot and away from the new walking path.  I still have to get together my end of season wrap-up for the 2023 season, so hopefully I can get that done before the new honey starts pouring in off the hives!  I’m also aiming to get a monthly update on the website here to keep things more current.  I do more regular updates on Instagram, but not everyone does social media, so you can subscribe to the website updates here in the bar on the right side and get an email every time there’s a new post.  Here’s to another sweet year!

I realized I hadn’t posted an update in quite a while, but, I’m here now!  This season has been a little bit of a roller-coaster.  We started REMARKABLY early this year with our first honey coming off the hives on May 14th, a good 2-3 weeks earlier than years prior.  This is now my 9th season of beekeeping and I can’t recall having honey available quite that early before.  After a mild winter, the natural attrition of the hive population just didn’t dip as far as it usually does, so there were more bees to start the season off and boy were they ready when spring kicked off early.  We had a very dry May but groundwater was still high enough to support the trees, so with a good Black Locust bloom and a lengthy stretch of honeysuckle bloom, the spring honey poured in off the hives nonstop.  Now it’s August, and usually we see a nectar dearth in July and August, but so far, after 5 inches of rain in July and already over an inch for August (with lots more forecast for this week alone), so the honey just keeps coming in.  More rain means more things bloom and for longer – I’ve even seen honeysuckle making quite a comeback this week.  July and August so far have been slower on honey production than May and June, but definitely more than the slight trickle I’m used to seeing this time of year.

That spring honey is just absolutely gorgeous this year, by the way.  Definitely give it a try if you haven’t had some before!  I’m a little behind at updating the Honey Guide for this year, but we already tore through the whole alphabet once and have started running double letters if that’s any indication of how things are going!  The guide is a great way to get more detail about your honey including tasting notes and possible sources.  While I consider all of my honey “Wildflower honey” since I never get a true varietal, I at least take a guess on what the content is based on what was blooming.  Occasionally a frame from May sticks around in the hive, half-capped, through September, so I’m not comfortable saying, “This is definitely all honeysuckle honey,” when it could contain honey from dozens upon dozens of different flowers throughout the season.  Personally, I think it’s neat to have so many different floral sources combine to make a honey that will never, ever be made again because you can’t possibly capture that blend ever again.  Our small batch processing, pulling honey about every week in roughly 5 gallon batches means each batch (indicated by a letter on the label) is truly unique.  Visit us at a market and grab a jar for yourself!