The Marvelous Honey Harvest

This week, Sam and I put on our bee suits and walked over to our apiary as our beekeepers harvested our first crop of honey of the year. Few experiences compare to harvesting honey. For some, walking into a habitat with thousands of little beings capable of doing harm is scary. 

There’s something about the protective layer, the bee suit, that makes you feel invincible when you walk into a swarm of bees. Ironically, it is also calming. The first time I put on a bee suit, my grandmother said I looked like an astronaut (granted, the bee suit was one size too big). After pulling the suit on and ensuring there were zero points of entry for the tiny honey bee, I approached our apiary. As I got closer, I could hear the bees humming louder.

I was excited to share this experience with Sam, who had never seen honey collected in person before. The bees have been a priority since we started working together. This year we planted a spring cover crop in the vineyard to revitalize compacted soil. We chose varieties that would also benefit our bees as pollen sources, aiming for a larger crop and keeping them busy. We planted clover, mustard, rye, and sweet pea. Although we expected mustard to be 5% of the cover crop, it took over the landscape and the mustard yellow engulfed the vineyard throughout late spring. It was beautiful. And, the honey bees loved it. Each morning as we walked from the house to the winery, we would stop at the vineyard to watch the mustard's progress. The bees would fly from flower to flower in a frenzy collecting as much pollen as they could. It was simply amazing to watch.

We weren’t sure what type of honey the mustard would yield. But when Sam and I checked on our honey harvest progress, we were amazed by the amount in each hive—double last year's amount with more still to be extracted! It seems our efforts were successful. We tasted the honey as the beekeepers showed us the full frames. We eagerly dipped a gloved finger into a pool of honey on the frame and carefully maneuvered our suits so we could taste it before quickly zipping them back up to prevent intruders. This year’s honey is light, citrusy, and delicious. We can’t wait for you to try it. We also are thrilled to have more honey to make honey wine with this year.

Our honey wines are special—connecting us to something bigger than ourselves. We are now in our family’s fifth generation of working with honey and honey bees. Sometimes, I feel like my pull to honey and honey bees is as intuitive as a honey bee creating a hex when filling a cell of honey. It’s a sweet feeling.