Our first honey harvest

This week we are celebrating a year on WoodEnd! Not in a year of Sundays could we have imagined that in April 2020 we would be in lock down, or that we would have an orchard full of blossom, food growing beds in the garden, or that we would harvest our first honey from our very own bees! But we did just that.

In the sunshine of last week, we donned our telly tubby suits, gathered our tools, lit the smoker (about 100 times ) and went about inspecting our hive all on our own. Up until this point we always had the oversight of our bee keeping trainer.

We were chuffed to locate our queen (green spot on her back) and to find a thriving healthy hive and several frames of neatly capped honey. We just removed one frame to extract the honey and learn this part of the process.

Rewarding doesn’t even cover the miracle of honey drizzling into our bowl from these amazing little creatures. It felt like gold dust on my finger tip for my first taste. Now that I understand the labour and toil it took to produce I’m blown away tbh.