Last weekend we were busy moving bees in Michigan and picking up our last 2 loads of honey. Yeah, no stings.
The truck is loaded with bees that we are taking to the holding yard. As the day warmed up the bees really started flying as you can see in the picture below.

This weekend was the ISBA fall meeting. The Pres of the club asked me to make a nice gift basket for donation..so this is what it looked like. These are available for sale or they can be designed with the products you want and the price you would like to spend.

Festivals are finally over. Working 7 days a week is killing me. Not to mention the very long hours. We have been starting at 7 a.m. and ending around 11 p.m. But the busy fall season is coming to an end. I have a full batch of Lavender Rose Petal Honey Soap that is now ready for sale.

Kenny's Club Working for the IBA

Indiana State Fair and Kenny's Club

I spent some time at the State Fair, so I will share some pics. This was Kenny's Bee Club working our fabulous booth at the State Fair. Lots of participation this year. One of my favorite things of the IBA booth is to see all of the different labels, that come from our members all over Indiana. Our members also make all kinds of products that are made from honey and or bees wax. So much personality shows through in the packaging. And a special THANKS to all of those volunteers that bring their warm friendly smiles. A big thanks for all the help!

More pics of the Honey Barn

Yeah, the temp has already dropped 25 + degrees...It is working.



I am adding some more pictures of the honey barn. Which shows more pics of the equipment that we use. Also in the last couple of weeks when the heat was almost unbearable, the honey house temp was out of control. Temperatures were reaching 106-112 degrees. Uhggg! So we talked to a couple of local heating and cooling people in Huntington. We went with a Bryant heating and cooling system. Which is supposed to pull bacteria from the air and help with the high humidity. With the humidity being so high we were concerned about moisture in the honey. Wet honey is not good, we check the moisture content on all our honey coming in the door, similar to the farmer who checks his soy beans, wheat, corn and etc. So now $$$$ later and the humidity being controlled we have more comfortable employees and dry honey. So hopefully we chose the right system. We sure did appreciate the speed at which Huntington Heating and Cooling worked. We had several estimates from several local places on Thursday and 2 days later on Saturday our system was installed....AMAZING...I will keep anyone who is interested, posted on its efficiency, pros and cons. We had LP Gas heating our old honey room.

Going from left to right, the frames of honey are loaded onto the conveyor and then through the uncapper, and they are then placed in the holding area or put into the extractor to the far right which then spins the honey filled frames at a very high speed(centrifugal force)causing the honey to be pulled from the combs. Once it has been pulled from the combs it then drains to the white tube that you see in the bottom center of the extractor. It then goes into the tank where the wax particles will float on the top and the honey left on the bottom will then be pumped into the big holding tank that is shown in picture above. Then the honey is ready to be put in barrels as shown to the right.

Please feel free to leave any comments or questions.

First Load of Honey

Here are some pictures of honey supers on the truck, first harvest. The honey is a little bit lighter in color than last years, and it is delicious. Any of you who stop by the shop look for the lighter colored honey, that is the first crop of 2010. Trucks of honey were brought in by Jeremy Lutter of Blueberry Acres and DeVon Howald of Majenica Creek Honey Farm.