Monday, July 13, 2009

Honey Now Available at World Garden

Parker 100% Natural Honey is now available at World Garden restaurant in Bentonville!

Check it out.

Sol

Tuesday, July 7, 2009

Get to Know the Bees who Made Your Honey

I am putting the blog address on the bottles of honey that I sell so people can get to know the hives from which their honey came.

Depending on the date on which the honey was harvested, you may be able to tell exactly which hive the honey came from just by visiting the blog. Look into it a little deeper and you can likely find the history of that hive. I do keep a spreadsheet and maybe from time to time I'll post it in case you want to see how the hives are doing.

Also, look for Parker Farms 100% Natural Honey coming soon to World Garden in Bentonville.

I'm having a great summer with honey this year.
Sol

Thursday, July 2, 2009

First Harvest of the Year.

I pulled a deep off each of two hives today, and extracted twenty frames of honey resulting in eight gallons and one pint of honey. I sieved it all out and bottled it which resulted in 37 pints and 16 quarts of honey.

So I'm gonna sell it and buy some more equipment so I can extract and bottle faster and easier and without making so much of a mess.

Current prices are as follows: one pint will sell for $6 and one quart will sell for $10. If you'd like to buy in larger quantities, I can make deals. This stuff may go fast, I've already got several quarts and pints reserved and I just finished an hour ago, so get yours soon.

The new equipment I want to buy will help me get this stuff done a lot quicker. My four frame tangential extractor is very slow, and a little messy. I plan to replace it with a nine frame radial extractor from Mann Lake Ltd. The current extractor tends to bow the comb out and break it a bit, and I'd rather not do it that way. Radials are easier to work with, but also cost a bit more, of course, every thing that's larger costs more. I'd also like to get an electric uncapping knife. I currently have a capping scratcher which is very messy and tears up the comb pretty bad. Also, a lot of cappings and pieces of junk end up in the sieve which after a certain point slow it down quite a bit. To catch the cappings cut from the comb with the knife, they have this tub strainer thing that I want to get too. But until I get loaded with money, I need more boxes and frames.

After six years, I've finally started getting some good honey, and it makes me very happy.
Sol