Honey, Bees, and More Honey!

It’s been a busy month filled with honey! So far we’ve only harvested the lighter colored, more mild tasting honey. The bees probably made this honey from plants such as: dandelions, maple and apple trees, autumn olive shrubs, wildflowers, and clover. Our next harvest we’re expecting to be much darker, bolder flavored honey. This is typically produced from plants like Japanese knotweed, goldenrod, bee balm, milkweed, and ragweed.

Here are some of our bees cleaning off the frames we harvested!

We might not like to think about the weather getting colder but we’re already planning on how to overwinter our hives this winter. That means checking for and treating pests, supplemental feeding of any hives that look weaker, checking how well the queen bee is doing her job, etc.

Just some bee activity for you to enjoy!

On another note, we’ve been planning what events we’ll attend later this year. We’re already scheduled for:

• RCS MS PTSO Fall Craft & Vendor Fair on Sunday, 9/28, from 10-3 in the RCS middle/high school parking lots

• Niskayuna High School PTO Craft Fair on Saturday, 10/25, from 10-3 at the Niskayuna High School

• Shaker Holiday Market running from 10/8-12/14 held Tuesdays-Sundays from 10-4 at the Shaker Heritage Society

As for the birds we’ve seen around lately, there’s the ever present goldfinches, woodpeckers, barred owls, blue birds, and even some hummingbirds! We haven’t seen anything more unusual lately but we’ll try to keep a better eye out.