Tulip Poplar

-Posted by Isaac

The first week of June we jumped into pulling honey and extracting. The spring honey looks like this:

A combination of nectars in this area-- Autumn olive, bush honeysuckle, and black locust. The result is a gorgeous honey. Light, luminous, almost radiant, with a delicate, floral and somewhat unique taste.

Just a few weeks later, we finish out the spring harvest with this:

What a change! This is the Tulip Poplar-- Dark, rich, somewhat musky... a product of the woods and hills of southeast Ohio.

We've got 45 hives down there, and this year they kicked butt!

Best tulip poplar year I've ever seen! We must have hit the weather just right. Almost every super looked like the photo above.

In fact, pretty quickly it was evident that I didn't put on enough supers.

Most years it's a pain. Having bees an hour away for the sole purpose of producing a speciality honey... it's a gamble. Sometimes it barely pays for itself. As you know, taking care of our girls involves more than just pulling honey.

But this year I drove home from the Tarlton yards in a very good mood. 25 hives done, 20 more to go. What would the Bainbridge yards bring?

More of the same! 

Awesome year for the tulip poplar! It kept us busy extracting another two days. The change in honey house aroma was incredible.

With only 45 hives producing this wonderful dark honey, no, we don't make enough to wholesale. But you can still find it every week at the farmer's markets. And some of the smaller stores- check out Produce And Provisions in the North Market.

It makes a great gift, and for me, a great conversation-- something truly unique from the hills of southern Ohio. I've got a couple pounds riding with me in the bee truck. You just never know who you'll run into.

With the tulip poplar done, we pretty much call it a wrap on the spring harvest. Three weeks of intensity finished! 

What to do? What to do? I can think of some things. 

Celebrate, for one. Yesterday I threw a big party and invited all my friends...