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Phoenixville Honey

Honey produced in Phoenixville, PA by Jaarsma Apiaries

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News/Updates

Coming Soon

By Phoenixville Honey 12 December 2018 20 May 2019

Look for our honey in the summer of 2019!

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Honey batch guide updated! Check out our profile

Caught this bee taking a break under a zinnia peta

Caught this bee taking a break under a zinnia petal, pollen pants full, trying to dodge the drizzle. This apiary has the most GORGEOUS accidental zinnia patch that keeps reseeding and blooming every year, and the pollinators (and beekeeper) just love it.

Pollinator party today! 🎉 These plants (catmint

Pollinator party today! 🎉
These plants (catmint and anise hyssop) were absolutely buzzing with all kinds of pollinators from butterflies to native bees, bumblebees, and honey bees. These are great plants go add a punch of purple and feed dozens of different pollinators, plus deer don't bother with them at all. Really important for late summer when there's not a lot else blooming!

Some days you need a little help from a friend to

Some days you need a little help from a friend to get you back on your feet.
#beekeeping #slowmobees

Quality bee butts today! These bees had emerged f

Quality bee butts today! These bees had emerged from their pupal state inside the cell, and their first job is to turn right back around and polish the cell down for the queen to lay a new egg. Bees pupate in cocoons under the wax cap in a cell, but the cocoons are very sticky, so instead of taking the trouble to remove them, the bees seal them down to the cell walls. Over time, the cell diameter shrinks as the walls build up with generations of cocoons. This is where the beekeeper keeps an eye on older frames and replaces them when the cells have become too small to raise new bees. Always looking out for them to make sure they've got everything they need!
#beekeeping #beebutt

Bees and coneflowers. Not only do these flowers f

Bees and coneflowers. Not only do these flowers feed all kinds of pollinators both pollen and nectar, but once they go to seed, you get to listen to little chatterbox goldfinches getting their morning snack. There are so many different varieties of coneflowers too, including a native one!

Sometimes bees build burr (excess) wax comb betwee

Sometimes bees build burr (excess) wax comb between boxes and sometimes they fill it with honey too. When I open the hive to check on them and separate the boxes, the comb breaks open and honey spills out. Of course, not a problem for the bees. They get right to work mopping up my mess. This always makes me laugh a little because it looks like they're hanging out around the water cooler, gossipping, all standing in a circle around the honey.

August market dates! . Hopefully a limited amount

August market dates!
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Hopefully a limited amount of honeycomb soon. I know I keep saying that every month but the hives are refusing to cap off the cells or have just chewed and recycled the wax base, and it's been super frustrating.
Dear bees, please refer to the user guide and comply with the regulations provided by your beekeeper.
Thanks.
Signed, The Management.

I love it when we get honey rainbow frames like th

I love it when we get honey rainbow frames like this. This time of year there's a marked shift in the color and flavor of honey. I wait to pull honey frames until they're mostly capped, so sometimes a frame can be in the hive from May if it keeps getting shuffled around and never completely filled and capped. Bees usually fill honey from the outside of the box in, so when I replace full frames of honey I've taken with empty ones, I put them in the center of the box, but not always because things get chaotic and sometimes the priority is to wrap up and close the hive as quick as possible instead of getting everything in the right order. Anyway, that means some frames get filled against the natural order of the hive and we get pretty results like this with the spring honey in the center and mid summer around the edges (and a beekeeper thumb photobombing in the bottom left corner 🙃).

Tomatoes and honey? Yes please! The darker late

Mountain mint, the late summer pollinator favorite

Mountain mint, the late summer pollinator favorite that just keeps blooming. The honey bees were joined by wasps, hornets, all kinds of sweat bees, and other native solitary bees. Mountain mint will bring all the bees to your yard!

Welcome to the world little bee! #beekeeping #hone

Welcome to the world little bee!
#beekeeping #honeybees

You know it's hot when that many bees are loafing

You know it's hot when that many bees are loafing around on the front porch, doing the washboard dance.
(Can confirm, it was indeed that hot. And humid.)

Sometimes the sunlight filters through the trees a

Sometimes the sunlight filters through the trees and it's just so pretty. HOT one today, but I knocked out hive inspections at this location and started pulling boxes. This time of year, the nectar flow slows down pretty significantly, and it's better to give the bees only the space they need, so that means taking off the unneeded extra honey supers. It's all a part of the seasonal process of beekeeping, even if I'm a little sad to be past solstice and into the back half of our season. We'll have the first round of our crowd favorite early summer classic wildflower honey (which I joke is honey-flavored-honey) at Malvern tomorrow (9a-1p). It's probably mostly white clover and sumac and is that gorgeous light amber color and flavor you know and love.
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The board in front of the hive is a little ramp for the bees. I shake bees off the honey frames, they land on the screen and crawl back up into the hive. The brush is to gently brush off any stragglers trying to hitch a ride on the frame.

July market dates! A bunch of great markets coming

July market dates!
A bunch of great markets coming up this month, hope to see you soon!

Updated the batch guide on the website (link in pr

The biggest hive at the @rpcommunitygarden was doi

The biggest hive at the @rpcommunitygarden was doing the washboard dance today. This is something I usually see in summer when it gets hot and humid and the nectar flow slows down. Science still hasn't quite figured out why bees do this - they've gone through a few studies to see if it's some kind of cleaning or hygienic beehavior but that doesn't seem to be the case. My guess is that, since I see it in LARGE hives when the nectar flow slows to a trickle, these big hives end up with a bunch of unemployed bees and it's too hot for them to stay inside and make it hotter in the hive, so they hang out on the "front porch" and fidget (rock back and forth) until there's work to do. Completely unscientific, but it was definitely only happening on the largest hive, not the other 3 today.
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Also, whew, the weather. Almost lost a whole week of beekeeping between rain and air quality issues, and probably shouldn't have gone out today because it's still not great, but it needed doing.

Queen spotting! This hive replaced their queen re

Queen spotting! This hive replaced their queen recently, so before I marked her, you get a chance to see if you can find her! This one is pretty easy and she's a beautiful queen - swipe to see the answer.
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Queen bees live around 2-3 years. The prior queen made it through almost 3 years before she was replaced and was arguably my favorite queen and hive. Her daughter worker bees are docile and productive, and here's hoping her replacement daughter queen is just as great as her mom!
#beekeeping #queenspotting

A little slow motion video of the hive that uses t

A little slow motion video of the hive that uses the bonus entrance halfway up the hive in a super. The front, main landing board entrance doesn't get nearly as much use as this does, but I figure bees are gonna bee and they know what's working for them. Bunches of pollen pants coming home that day!

Bee larvae! From the time the egg is laid, each l

Bee larvae! From the time the egg is laid, each larva is visited by nurse bees about 1300 times every day for the 8 days before the cell is capped and they go into their pupal stage. It takes a lot of work and food to turn an egg into an adult bee!
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As far as the smoke today affecting the bees, I didn't see any difference. Beekeepers use smoke on bees since their instinct is to move away from the smoke (presuming smoke=fire) and into the hive. This lets the beekeeper do their work without harming bees. It can also disrupt their pheromone signal briefly so that the alarm signal is masked. I didn't notice any big difference at the hives today, but it's possible the abundance of smoke in the air may be making them spend more time inside the hive instead of out foraging. Hopefully this moves out quickly and some much needed rain moves in for both us and the regions directly affected by fire.

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