Author: <span>Phoenixville Honey</span>
Honey Listing

2020 Honey is Here!


Our first round of 2020 honey is here and in jars, ready for sale!  Those four photos above are of the four different batches we extracted so far this year.  A batch is just a single fill of our small, hand-crank, two frame extractor with each fill clocking in around 4 gallons or about 45 lbs of honey.  Remarkably, each batch is about the same in terms of color despite the fact that we definitely waited longer to do the first extractor run so that we could process more in one single day instead of piecemeal here and there as frames come off the hives.  This was done mostly for safety reasons, to minimize exposure (even though we wore masks and gloves during the entirety of the extracting process), and to keep our workflow contained to one single day.  We did have a remarkable season for Black Locust, and given the near colorlessness of this honey, it’s probably primarily from Black Locust trees.  Black Locust honey is VERY sweet and has light floral notes.  As we go on in the season, through July, we see the color darken until we hit the Buckwheat nectar from our local farms which creates a nearly coffee black honey.  Why is honey such different colors?  It has a lot to do with flavonoids and phenolic acids, much like the color of grapes and wine.  The redder the wine, the higher the content of flavonoids and phenolic acids, and the antioxidant content is also higher.  The same goes for honey.  The darker the honey, the higher the antioxidant content.  We’ll hopefully be extracting and bottling the mid summer run of honey in the next two weeks or so.  Everything seems to be taking a little longer with the extra sanitizing and caution to prevent any chance of transmission of COVID-19.  We’re a VERY small business and our customers mean the world to us, so we want to keep you safe!


We also added a few new items to the website including two new candle sizes and a tea towel with our logo, screen printed by hand!  The logo was created during a printmaking class taken by the Queen Bee of our operation which eventually became our logo and we’ve really fallen in love with it.  It felt like a great gift item to have, so we’ve got a few of those tea towels in our inventory!  We’re still doing regular deliveries in the Phoenixville area on Fridays, and if you’re just outside the delivery area, email us and we can figure something out.

We hope your summer is going well, or as well as it can, in light of the circumstances!

News/Updates

May 2020 Update

I’m pretty sure life has changed dramatically for all of us in one way or another!  Fortunately, despite all the shut downs, beekeeping is considered agriculture and is exempt under the Pennsylvania Stay-At-Home order, so we’re allowed to continue tending to our bees, and let’s face it, social distancing is pretty easy when you’re surrounded by a cloud of bees!  While the beekeeping side of the business has been pretty normal, our glass jar supplier has suspended in-person order pickups, and shipping is incredibly costly, so this puts a bit of a wrinkle in our future honey bottling.  We have a good bit of stock from 2019 still and a few cases of jars for the 2020 stock, plus buckets to hold the honey as it comes in this summer.  Fortunately, honey has a nearly infinite shelf life, so it’ll hold just fine until we can get access to bottles again!

Although we’re a bit behind the curve on this, we’ve finally got set up for local contact-free honey delivery.  We’d had a few Spring markets planned, so we waited to see how things would pan out, but unfortunately they’ve all been cancelled or postponed.  With a VERY empty schedule and lots of honey on hand, we decided to go ahead and set up an eCommerce site and arrange for local, contact-free delivery within a 1 mile radius of our extracting location in Phoenixville, Pennsylvania.  This is something new for us, so please be patient while we’re sorting out the bumps in this new road!  We’ve got a few new things on the site that we were planning on bringing to markets, as well as a new item or two in the works, coming soon.

Check out our website to order honey for local, contact-free delivery here: https://phoenixvillehoney.square.site/

All of our honey was bottled before December 2019, before the COVID-19 outbreak reached our area.  Jars and other goods have all been held in a separate room, and we’ve been personally following all guidance provided by the state for social distancing, mask wearing, hand washing, etc.  Orders will be filled and delivered on Fridays only, and we will be wearing a mask and gloves with frequent hand sanitizer applications both while packing orders and in between deliveries.  Delivery radius is 1 mile from our extracting location in Phoenixville.  If you’re just outside the delivery area and wish to order honey, please email us (info@phoenixvillehoney.com) and we’ll see if we can work something out!  Unfortunately, we’re not set up to ship honey, so any extended-area deliveries requested via email would still be in-person, contact-free deliveries.

Thank you for supporting this small business and your local honey bees!

Honey Listing

Honey is Ready!

We’re ready finally! I have four batches in jars and ready to go. Bach A, B, and C are $12 per jar, and Batch D is $13 per jar. Jars are 1lb of honey by weight in a glass jar. Return your empty jar for 50 cents off your next purchase!

Batch A is the earliest batch I extracted and is probably primarily from black locust trees. This early Spring honey is sweet and floral.

Batches B and C are a mix of some Spring and Summer honey and are a great example of classic wildflower honey.

Batch D is my rare gem! This honey is mostly buckwheat honey, so it’s a lot darker in color and has a rich taste similar molasses. If you love espresso and dark chocolate, this will be right up your alley. There’s a very limited amount of this honey, and it’s pretty special stuff!

To purchase, you can contact us via Direct Message on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/phoenixvillehoney/) or email us (info@phoenixvillehoney.com).

News/Updates

Hey Honey

We recently got final approval from the state and are on our way to having honey available!  It’s getting to be late May, so hopefully within the next 2-4 weeks we should have enough capped honey from the hives to do our first processing run.  What is a processing run?  Our beekeeper ‘robs’ frames of capped honey from the hive and brings them to the licensed and inspected processing location.  The wax capping is removed from the frames of honey and then the frame is spun in a centrifugal extractor.  Lather, rinse, and repeat until all the collected frames are empty.  The collected honey in the bottom of the extractor is then flows through a stainless steel mesh strainer that keeps bits of wax, bee parts, and solid pollen out of the final product.  Once the honey is strained and collected in a bottling bucket, individual jars are filled and sealed.  It’s really that simple!  I mean, it’s a decent amount of work, but we don’t do anything to the honey other than run it through the strainer.

All that to say that we’ll be back somewhere between June 7-21 with beautiful jars of local honey that we hope you’ll enjoy as much as we do!