Worth every lift…

I jarred the first of this year’s spring honey yesterday. Earlier in the season than you might expect — but that’s a story for another post. This morning I’ve just fetched the jars from the warmer — clear, golden, and ready for labelling — and I’m sitting here with a coffee thinking about how many times I’ve actually lifted this stuff.

I suspect most people assume the hard work happens at harvest. The frames come out, the honey spins out, you bottle it up. One lift, maybe two.

They’re off by about forty.

It starts long before harvest

From April through July, I’m at the hives every week — checking the colony is healthy, that the queen’s laying well, that the bees have enough room to keep going. Routine stuff. Except that to get down to the brood box, I have to lift the whole super off first.

Four hive supers stacked on the grass, frames and bees visible in the top box — Four supers off the hive — you work through the brood box underneath and then put it all back together again.

Off, inspect, back on again. Every week. For eight weeks.

That’s sixteen lifts of the super before a single jar has been filled — and those supers get heavier as the season goes on. By midsummer, when the nectar flow is in full swing and the bees have been working flat out for weeks, a full super — ten frames, wooden box and all — weighs around 30 pounds. That’s a proper workout.

I should, by rights, look like He-Man. I don’t.

Then comes harvest

We take two crops — the first in late May or early June from the spring nectar flow, and the second in August from the summer. Each time, the same routine: supers off the hives and onto the back of the truck for the trip to Broads Bee, our local extractor.

Wooden hive supers stacked on the bed of a pickup truck at dusk — Harvest time — supers loaded for the trip to Broads Bee. There's something satisfying about a truck full of full supers.

Super off the hive. Super onto the truck. Super off the truck at the other end. I don’t do my own extraction, so a few days later I’m back to collect — now in buckets rather than frames, each one around 30 pounds of honey.

White honey buckets lined up inside the extraction facility at Broads Bee — Waiting at Broads Bee after extraction — every one of those buckets is heavy, and there are a lot of them.

White honey buckets loaded in the bed of a pickup truck — Buckets onto the truck. Buckets off the truck at home. Every single one.

The warming, the waiting, the bottling

Back home, the buckets go into storage while I get everything ready for bottling.

Tall stacks of white honey buckets stored indoors — A season's worth of honey in stacks — each of those buckets has already been lifted more times than you'd think.

Then they go into the honey warmer to gently liquify before going into the bottling tank — another lift each way. For the spring honey there’s an extra step: the supers themselves sit on top of the warmer first, warming through slowly before the honey is even removed.

A tall stack of supers resting on top of the honey warmer in the honey house — Supers on the warmer — a spring-only step. It takes time, but it's worth it.

Once it’s jarred, the jars go back into the warmer for the clearing process — one more trip in, one more trip out.

Two honey buckets inside a wooden insulated honey warmer, lid open — Buckets in the warmer — gently brought up to temperature before bottling.

The number

Last year we filled 1,200 jars. 545 kilograms of honey.

By the time each jar reaches you — lifted in supers, in buckets, in jars, across months of inspection visits, harvest runs, warming cycles and bottling days — I’ve moved that honey around 35 times.

The total weight lifted across the whole year, for the whole crop? Roughly 12 tonnes.

Two yellow crates of honey jars in a wheelbarrow on a gravel path in morning sun — This morning — jars out of the warmer, in crates, heading back to the house to be labelled.

Twelve tonnes, to get 545 kilograms of honey to your table.

But here’s the real number

A teaspoon of honey weighs about 7 grams. Each one is the life’s work of twelve bees — a worker honeybee produces roughly a twelfth of a teaspoon over her entire lifetime, from the day she emerges from the comb to the day she wears her wings out and dies.

545 kilograms works out to around 78,000 teaspoons.

Multiply that by twelve.

Nearly a million bees gave their entire working lives to produce last year’s crop.

I’ll stop complaining about my back…

And as it happens — this year’s spring honey is available now. Lighter and more floral than the summer harvest, with all the freshness of an early season. Drop me a message to arrange your order…