Jacob continues to build his bee business. He put a lot of energy into building up his hives in both strength and number over the fall and winter to prepare for the honey flows this spring and summer.
Orange blossom was the first flow of the season. He took his bees to Whisenant Farms in Parrish where he grew up. Unfortunately, for unknown reasons, the swarming was bad this year. He caught 68 swarms off of 208 hives and who knows how many more swarms there were that were never noticed. This affects honey production, so he didn’t make as much as he had hoped, but he still did pretty well making 12 drums of orange blossom honey.
Next was gallberry. He does this locally in Hague and Hampton. With the bees more settled and the swarming behind him, the bees did pretty well with this making 22 drums.
He also had mating boxes at our house that made 2.5 drums of honey just off of whatever they could find around our place.
He had originally planned to take bees to North Georgia and North Carolina for the Sourwood flow, but several factors, including a hurricane that made landfall there, made him opt to skip it. Maybe next year.
In the meantime he has all of his bees on Paynes Prairie making wildflower honey until the fall.
Overall, Jacob is pretty happy with how things are progressing with his up and coming business. We look forward to next year! (But there’s lots to be done before then!)
1 comment:
Way to go Jacob. I think I need to buy Henry some bee books so I can understand a little better how this all works :)
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