Sharing Honey Bounty
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This Little Red Riding Hood-look alike basket has honey for my neighbors. (Photo by Charlotte Ekker Wiggins)
Sharing Honey Bounty
When I first started beekeeping in 2010, I had no interest in the honey, I wanted the bees to pollinate my one acre hillside full of dwarf fruit trees.
Since then, I have developed an appreciation not only for the honey but for how much others appreciate it. I now consider a honey devoid year a bad one because then I don’t have honey to give as gifts. Some of the favorite gifts I have given over the years have included honey.
Honey is an amazing product in many ways. Besides a sweetener twice as sweet as cane sugar, honey can be used to treat scrapes and cuts. A friend who has horses said her vet told her to find a local honey source to treat a laceration on one of her horse’s legs. You bet I replaced the gift honey she used, there’s nothing quite comforting in the middle of a cold gray winter day that a hot cup of tea with honey.
Besides family, I share my apiary bounty with my neighbors. They all live uphill from my apiary and periodically they will report seeing my bees on their flowers. One even rescued a bedraggled delivery driver who had the poor sense of driving down my one lane driveway when I was working on a nearby colony. He wasn’t stung but he was rattled enough that he asked me to drive his truck back out of the driveway.
Some people don’t know much about honey so I have business cards with my contact information one one side and honey facts on the other one. Several years ago I made up a business card with a honey recipe. It’s helpful to give people who don’t know what to do with honey some ideas.
These honey jars are packaged and labelled as I do my honey jars for sale. I also add how many flowers it took to make that particular jar of honey. It takes 2 million blossoms to make one pound of honey. I don’t know about you but that gives me pause every time I think about that number.
The ice and snow have melted enough so I can now safely deliver these honey jars to my neighbors. Enjoy!
