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Phoenixville Honey

Honey produced in Phoenixville, PA by Jaarsma Apiaries

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Coming Soon

By Phoenixville Honey 12 December 2018 20 May 2019

Look for our honey in the summer of 2019!

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June markets! Especially excited for the Craft an

June markets! Especially excited for the Craft and Mercantile market in under 2 weeks at Eagleview. Going to have some new things to share with you!

How bees make beeswax! That bee on the left is sh

How bees make beeswax! That bee on the left is showing off the underside of her abdomen where her eight wax glands are. Wax glands exude liquid wax that forms into little chips that are held in pockets that you see here. The worker bee only produces wax during about her 2nd to 3rd week of life and once she starts flying and foraging, the glands atrophy. While producing wax, the worker bee pulls chips out of these pockets, then chews and forms them into honeycomb. It takes bees consuming about 6-8 pounds of honey to produce a pound of wax, so for a beekeeper, reusing wax comb saves the bees time and helps them produce more honey. During peak season, when nectar and pollen are abundant, a strong hive can build out a blank frame in a matter of a week. Industrious gals!

There has been so, SO much honey so early in the s

There has been so, SO much honey so early in the season, so of course I'm extracting even more tonight! So many swarm calls this season (none of them from my own hives!), such weird weather, and I joke some years that the bees and I aren't reading the same manual, but this year, we could very well both have burnt the manual and shared a toast over the embers to a season of chaos. Here's a very deep-in-the-weeds, beekeeping nerd rundown of how things have been going.
1. We had a fairly mild winter which meant that some of our hive pests didn't get frozen off (I'm looking at you, hive beetles), and the bee populations didn't dip as far as they usually do over winter. It's a normal process to lose a certain amount of bees by attrition over the winter but this year the population felt higher in March than it normally is.
2. An early but fitful start to spring meant the hives were able, even with the back and forth warm and cool, to build up their population REMARKABLY quickly. The swarm impulse was a real challenge to manage, and a VERY early start to our big tree blooms and nectar flow (easily 3 weeks ahead of last year) meant scrambling to add enough empty boxes for them to fill with wild abandon. Remember how the mild winter and early spring meant a larger population? That also translates to more honey since there are more bees to collect more nectar. In nearly 10 years of doing this, I haven't seen this much honey, this fast, this early.
3. Same number of hives, but I've processed over ⅓ of last year's honey total in a matter of 2 weeks this year, all before I even ran my first batch of honey last year.
4. This spring honey is SO good, I can't even. Good thing there's a lot of it because I want it to last forever.
5. Have I mentioned we need rain? Those bees are just starting to get July-nectar-dearth cranky, and I can't blame them.
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Anyway, thanks for coming to my random, long beekeeping run down while I wait for the extractor to finish its thing. Always happy to chat more about bees and all the work that goes into those jars of liquid sunshine. Bee questions are always answered free of charge at farmers markets! 🐝💛

Because we're all feeling that lack of rain! A lo

Because we're all feeling that lack of rain! A lot of my apiary hosts keep a bird bath or other water source available and filled for the bees. This one is a concrete bird bath (one of their FAVORITE sources for water) which gives a nice, grippy surface, and the minerals from the concrete make the water "stinky" and easier for them to find. Bees use water as part of the process to raise brood and also to cool the hive when the temperature gets too hot. Water bearer bees will carry back water to distribute throughout the hive which will be fanned off as evaporative cooling. And that's the honey bee HVAC basics!

These gals were keeping an eye on me today through

A bee on some potted catmint. It's not native her

A bee on some potted catmint. It's not native here but it's considered naturalized since it's been here so long and tends not to be invasive. It's definitely a pollinator favorite at this location!

Such pretty pollen colors coming into the hives la

Such pretty pollen colors coming into the hives lately. Also TONS AND TONS of honey. The big Black Locust bloom period is just wrapping up, so the honey is coming off the hives by the bucket load. Clover just started blooming too, so we're definitely into peak season for the next month or so. Hope to see you out at Downingtown Farmers market on Saturday for World Bee Day!

A bee's eye view. Busy day of beekeeping today an

A bee's eye view. Busy day of beekeeping today and I'm definitely not ready for these temperatures!
#beehive #beekeeping #honeybees

Buttercup fever today. Sweat bees and honey bees

Buttercup fever today. Sweat bees and honey bees were all working on this field of flowers, and while I didn't think buttercups were all that popular with honey bees, they sure were today.
#buttercups #honeybees #beekeeping

May market dates! I suspect the first 2023 honey

May market dates! I suspect the first 2023 honey will be available for one of those markets, so keep an eye out for updates!

If the top box where the bees store nectar and hon

If the top box where the bees store nectar and honey feels particularly heavy, I'll pull a frame or two to check and see how far along we are. This is a quick video of that process! The capped cells (flat on the outer surface) have already been cured down from 80% moisture as fresh nectar to about 16% moisture to be shelf stable honey. A fair number of those frames are 50% or more capped already!
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Honestly I can't believe how full these boxes are getting and we haven't even hit our BIG nectar flow when black locust trees bloom. Usually I start pulling honey a week or two after the black locust bloom but I'm not sure I can wait for that this year. The hive stacks are already eye level and filling up mighty fast this year. Probably at max, two weeks till I'm processing the first round of 2023 honey!
#beekeeping

Bee eggs! In about 3 weeks, those eggs will emerg

Bee eggs! In about 3 weeks, those eggs will emerge from their cells as adult bees, ready to to take on a number of different jobs throughout their lives - everything from cleaning to being an undertaker, queen's assistant, forager, nursery monitor, pollen packer, and just about anything the hive might need.
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Queens typically lay one egg per cell, but sometimes a queen will pop two eggs into one cell (just like the cell a little left of center) - different reasons that can happen, and usually it's not a problem unless there are A LOT of doubled up cells or dozens of eggs per cell which is a whole different issue. Only one larva can occupy a cell, so the bees will remove one of the eggs before too long.
#beekeeping #honeybees

Bees love those spring "weeds" which aren't weeds

Bees love those spring "weeds" which aren't weeds to beekeepers at all, but valuable sources of food for all kinds of pollinators!
#beekeeping

It's April, right? Usually I get frames that star

It's April, right? Usually I get frames that start being capped off around mid May.. and that box is HEAVY already. Can't believe how early we are - growing degree charts say around 2 weeks ahead but this feels like 3 or 4! Not complaining necessarily, but this sure isn't your average spring! Definitely could use a solid couple days of rain though.
#beekeeping

It's Hive Code. When your beekeeper is also a big

It's Hive Code.
When your beekeeper is also a big nerd, and @thecolorfulgeek makes the best t-shirts with Wednesday Addams content.
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Another hive inspection day! The sunshine and low humidity have made this a pretty spectacular afternoon. One more apiary to run through and I'm enjoying every last second of this sunshine.
#snitchesgetstung #hivecode #beekeeping

Well, hello. Yes, that's a frame full of nectar.

Well, hello. Yes, that's a frame full of nectar. This hive in particular had pretty well filled the box I added last week with nectar, which I did not expect at all, but here we are! This is easily two weeks ahead of last year which is on track with the accumulated growing degree days chart (posted in stories). Now, all that nectar has to be cured down into honey still, but since temperatures have been so high so early, and humidity has been fairly low, I expect our first round of capped honey will happen mid May or so (usually it's last week of May or first week of June). A lot of this still hinges on our big tree blooms (c'mon black locust!), and anything can happen in a month, but I'm not gonna lie, I missed this over the winter, but also can't believe we're this far this fast.
#beekeeping

A queen bee with her adoring court surrounding her

A queen bee with her adoring court surrounding her. The queen's needs are all attended to by her court, and a well-loved queen will have a clear circle of worker bees surrounding her at all times. They clean her, feed her, and even carry off her waste. In return, she can lay up to 2000 eggs per day in peak season, ensuring hive survival by creating hundreds of thousands of bees during her 2-3 year lifespan. The blue dot on her back is a non-toxic marker dot so she's easier to find at peak bee population and means I get my work done faster with less interruption to the hive.
#beekeeping #queenbee #honeybees

Couple of quality collisions this afternoon! The

Couple of quality collisions this afternoon! The hives are REALLY popping off now - it's amazing how fast we've gone from cold and gross to spring on capslock.
#beekeeping

April market dates!

April market dates!

That greenish yellow-grey coming in by the pollen-

That greenish yellow-grey coming in by the pollen-pant-load is probably red maple (which I know is blooming like crazy right now). The lighter yellows are probably some kind of willow, and I also saw another hive bringing in an orange that's crocus pollen. Beekeepers observe the world a little differently - I can identify what's blooming based on pollen colors and where we are in the season, but I'm also always looking around to see what's in flower. Not all flowers are as showy or pretty as a crocus, but trees like maples with flowers that don't look like much are SUPER important to the bees in spring.
#beekeeping #slowmobees

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