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After such a disappointing honey season last year, this year has been incredibly busy.  The weather has been working in our favor, the hives are strong and productive, and your beekeeper is doing her best to keep up with the bees!  We’ve already surpassed 60% of last year’s total honey, just to show you how much of a difference the weather can make for honey production.  We’ve had a relatively dry spring which isn’t great for our farmers considering the drought conditions we’re in now, but it’s allowed the bees to get out and collect nectar more days than not (unlike last year when it rained all May and June).  While we’re slowly selling out of the last few jars of last year’s stock, we’ve got PLENTY of spring honey available with the midsummer crowd-favorite starting to roll in over the next few weeks.  And don’t worry – if we’re currently sold out of your favorite variety (late summer/dark honey people, this is you), it’s only a matter of weeks before it’s back.  The late summer varieties usually start showing up middle of August which really isn’t that far off already.  I’m off of markets most of July between Blobfest (which is my favorite quirky, local event of the whole year) and a vacation, but I hope to see you for the Tomato Festival markets coming up in the end of July and August.  If you think maybe tomatoes and honey don’t go together, let me tell you about how quickly we manage to empty the pan of Balsamic Honey Glazed Tomatoes every time we make it.  You might even be able to collect all the ingredients at the farmers market – add on some cheese and a good sourdough bread, and you’ve got something really incredible.  Looking forward to seeing you at a market soon!

In my mind, the beekeeping season always runs from May to April, so while December is the end of the calendar year, it’s not the end of the natural flow of the beekeeping year.  Or, at least, this is how I’m justifying posting yet another late season wrap-up!

This 2025 season was a challenge from the start.  We had an incredibly rainy spring which kept the bees from getting out to collect nectar from flowers.  June through July was rainy as well with round after round of bad storms in July.  Then, it stopped raining which turned the late summer and early fall flows into barely a trickle.  It can be difficult as a beekeeper to do the same thing every year and come up with a 1000 lb swing in honey production based solely on the weather, but I haven’t yet figured out how to control the weather (and clearly, neither have the bees).

The grand total for the year was 989 lbs of honey over 31 unique batches.  In the photo above, they’re arranged like this:
Top row: Batches A-C
Second Row: Batches D-G
Third Row: H-M
Fourth Row: N-S
Fifth Row: T-Y
Bottom Row: Z-DD plus End of Season

You can see how the top two partial rows are spring honey where in previous years, it was a full 2 or 3 rows of the lighter spring honey.  Our spring season was pretty well washed out by the rain, and it’s really obvious in that wall of honey photo.  That said, even though there was less honey, the batches I did pull were some of the best honey I’ve ever gotten off those hives, and I’m super proud of those bees for producing such great honey despite the weather being against them all year.

In other statistics, my customers returned 393 jars which is a new record and I’m absolutely blown away. The impact is tremendous for me as a small business – it amounts to being able to skip an entire trip out to pick up new jars, saving both the carbon cost of the gas to get there and back as well as giving me back a few hours of time.

I’ve said it multiple times this year, but I’m so incredibly grateful to be a part of a community of small and local agriculture, farmers markets, makers, and all of you folks who support us.  You make it possible to keep doing what I do, and I’m looking forward to another season!