I’ve mentioned this before, but for those of you who don’t know, The Renaissance Man is currently an apprentice in the Oregon Master Beekeeper Program. The program has been a great way to get started with beekeeping, and the best part is that they pair you with a bee mentor! Tom is our mentor, and he’s been an invaluable resource in our beekeeping journey. He’s come out to our house a couple of times to check on the honeybees, and he’s never farther away than a quick email when we’ve had questions. A few weekends back he came out to the house to do an “end of season” check-in on the honeybees.

We’ll be collecting honey from the bees over Labor Day weekend, so it’s important to make sure that the hives are strong so they make it through the winter.

All summer long The Renaissance Man and I have been looking forward to collecting honey from our hives! We’ve been extremely lucky and have two really strong hives that have done a ton of work this summer. Both hives have grown significantly and they’ve each built honeycomb and filled that honeycomb with loads of honey! Tom was impressed with the weight of our honey supers, which means…keep your fingers crossed…lots of honey!

After taking a look in the hives and checking the weight of the honey supers, each hive was then checked for varroa mites. Mind you, before our check-in with Tom, I had never even heard of a varroa mite.

To do the test we first collected honeybees in an old peanut butter jar, Jiffy for the win!

Once you collect about half a jar of bees you then pour in some powdered sugar and start shaking. Remarkably, most of the bees survive the whole experience! Those bees are tough cookies. The powdered sugar coats the bees and the shaking knocks off the varroa mites.

And then you shake the jar over a clean plate. The lid of the jar has holes and so the powdered sugar shakes out along with the varroa mites.

Now when you look at the plate, focus in on the black dots. Those are varroa mites.

The Noir Hive had a larger amount of varroa mites than the Gris Hive, but to be on the safe side, we treated both hives for mites so they stay healthy and strong.

The most exciting part of the day was trying our honey! As we were working the hives, Tom casually asked us if we had tried any of the honey yet. Both The Renaissance Man and I jumped at the opportunity! I don’t know why we hadn’t thought to try it before, but we were thankful to have Tom give us the green light. With a quick flick of the bee hive tool, The Renaissance Man grabbed a chunk of honeycomb from one of the frames and quickly put it in a jar before it started to drip.

We looked at each other with giddy excitement and then dipped a finger in to give it a try.

The honey is better than we ever could have imagined! It has notes of citrus, blackberries, and layers upon layers of other flavors. Because our bees have been pollinating the neighborhood gardens, flowers, and pretty much anything within a five mile radius, our honey is a bit of a mixed bag.

It truly is Red Hills Honey!

Up next, we move the honeybees and get to work extracting the honey!