Bottling the Summer 2026 Honey Harvest

It was high time we get the honey out of the five gallon buckets and into jars as we're out of the 2025 summer and fall crop of honey.  The summer 2026 crop yielded 17.8 gallons of honey that we've stored in 5 gallon buckets.  We dehumidified it down to 18.5% moisture and now its ready to bottle.  We sterilized all the jars and arranged the empty jars on the island along with lids and began pouring.  You can click the arrow below to watch the video of the smooth, sweet honey coming out of the honey gate and into the jars.

We bottled the honey in 3 separate batches.  I liked the red tinge of the honey in this photo as the morning sun is shining in through the kitchen window.

As we are bottling and going from jar to jar, sometimes honey gets on the side of the jars so they must be wiped down with a dishrag with warm, soapy water on it.  No one likes getting a sticky jar of honey.  We found an online label service called VistaPrint a couple of years ago and designed some labels that we affix to all the jar lids.

Here is an up close photo of the labels that we put on each jar of honey.

In all we got 152 jars of honey ready to sell.  Last year our bees yielded 170 jars.  We attribute the lower production to a big rain event we got right smack dab in the middle of the "flow" when the Chinese Tallow trees were flowering.  This really messed things up, but we're not complaining.  In fact, if we sell all of our honey, this year (our third year as beekeepers) will be the year we get out of the red and into the black.  Beekeeping is an expensive hobby!

Last year's crop crystallized during the winter months.  This year we hope to mitigate that by storing all of our honey in our new "hot box" that was given to us by someone going out of the honey-selling business.  It's an old refrigerator fitted with a couple of light bulbs and a thermostat that helps keep the honey at a temperature high enough that it never crystallizes and low enough that the beneficial enzymes in the raw honey are not damaged.

We've already sold 36 jars and have a stockpile of honey inventory for our customers.  We're mostly on the honor-system where our loyal customers come and get jars of honey out of the garage and leave money in the box to pay for it.  We'll likely harvest honey again this fall.  The fall crop is a fraction of the summer crop.  We like to leave some honey for the bees to eat over the winter though.  It is the bees' honey, after-all.  We erected our Honey for Sale sign by the road.  We'll leave it up until we run out.

The summer 2026 honey crop is all done!

Jarring Up the Honey

 I'll start off this blog post with a quote about honey from a well-known expert on honey:

"A day without a friend is like a pot without a single drop of honey left inside." - Winnie The Pooh

How true that is, Pooh Bear.  We are thankful to God for our friends and we're thankful that we have several "pots" full of honey.  Our aim today is to empty the pots into jars.  We installed a honey gate on a food grade 5 gallon bucket, sterilized a bunch of jars that we purchased and got ready to pour the sticky, sweet, stuff into pint-sized jars.  We were doing it in the kitchen, so a secondary goal was to not make a sticky mess.

We uncapped the first bucket and got ready to pour it into the bucket with the honey gate on it.  That way you can control the flow.

And the process began!  I had to do a little fine tuning by tightening the screw on one side, but pretty soon, we had an assembly line going that would have made Henry Ford jealous.  I held the jar and controlled the honey gate.  Russ called out when to close the gate.  The jar was then given to Tricia who wiped the outside of the jar, tightened the lid and packed the full jars in cases.

We weighed the pint jar full of honey after zeroing out the kitchen scale to see where we were on the weight.  A pint jar of honey weighs a little more than a pound and a quarter.

We really like glass jars better, but we did purchase a few plastic jars with a squeeze top.  We made more than a case of those.

The honey is primarily Chinese Tallow Tree honey.  It is darker and has a richer taste profile (that sounds fancy, doesn't it?) than wildflower honey.  I decided to take a photo of the two different styles of jars of honey we made with a frame and the four bee boxes in the background.

I like the amber-like color of the Our Maker's Acres Family Farm honey when the sun shines through it.  

All in all we made 119 pint-sized jars of honey.  Not too shabby for the first time!  We'll eat all we can and sell the rest.  We're also planning to pull honey again in the fall.  That will primarily be Goldenrod honey.  It has a stronger taste and a pungent smell that, honestly, smells like sweaty gym socks, but it is good for you.

Fun Fact: It takes a bee 10,000,000 trips to collect enough nectar to make 1 pound of honey. -Sue Monk Kidd

Pickling Quail Eggs

I mentioned last week that a friend from church that lives down the road had given us a bunch of quail eggs.  They raise quail.  At one time we had some quail, but Benjamin mistakenly left the door of the chicken tractor open and the quail escaped.  I would like to think that they made it in the wild, but they more likely become a delectable treat for a hawk or owl or possum.

With the first batch, we scrambled the quail eggs and we fried the quail eggs and we boiled the quail eggs.  Then our friend gave us a bunch more quail eggs.  Tricia decided she'd try her hand at pickling some.  People in this area have always kept quail eggs.  I can remember going into small mom & pop convenience stores and seeing jars of pickled quail eggs for sale.  In fact, there was all kinds of pickled goods for sale - pickled chicken eggs and a big jar of pickled pig's feet.  Come to think of it, I never see pickled pig's feet anymore. 

Tricia lined up the ingredients for making pickled quail eggs - white vinegar, salt, hot sauce, water, pepper flakes, cayenne pepper, hot pepper, water, and clean pint jars.  Our friend gave us the recipe that she uses:

First, boil a ratio of water to vinegar depending on the amount of eggs.  20 - 22 quail eggs will fit in a pint jar.  In a sterile jar, you put the following in order:

• Eggs,
• 1 Tablespoon red pepper,
• 1 Tablespoon red pepper flakes,
• Hot pepper sliced

Pour the vinegar solution over the eggs and seal.

Place the jars in a water bath canner for five minutes.

Pull them out and let them cool.  You should hear the caps pop when sealed.  Once cool store them in the fridge.

These are a delicious little tasty, spicy snack.