Holiday Season Sales - Autumn Harvest Updates

 

After a completely saturating rainy early summer, we finally had some prolonged dry weather coming into the fall harvest.

On Monday, I packed the bees into their overwintering (we hope) configuration and topped them off with the first round of emergency sugar supplies (if they need it).  We are heading into the winter with four hives, one of which is a two-box colony. Generally we've been successful getting hives through the winter, so we are optimistic that these are all strong enough to make it.

The wet spring/early summer resulted in a small harvest for Spring Honey this year. For reference, our largest harvest ever was about 300 pounds in 2021 -- but this year we only have 70 pounds!! We'd have to go back to 2018-- and less hives-- to find a comparable harvest. 

The dryer mid/late summer weather helped us rebound a bit for the harvest of our Autumn Honey. According to my records, we are pretty consistently getting half as much (or a bit less than half) of Autumn Honey as we do Spring, which makes this year a significant outlier.  We harvested about 90 pounds, which is closer than we expected to our record fall harvest in 2019 of 109 pounds.

So-- where can you get it?  Very sweet of you to ask (#LameDadJoke):

We have continued to make bimonthly appearances at the Ross Township Farmers Market and have two more planned dates there:  October 9th (today) and October 23rd.  The market is located at St. John's Evangelical Lutheran Church, 920 Perry Hwy. 15229. The market runs every Wednesday 3-7 pm (rain or shine!) from May until October, and we've been there every 2 weeks (typically).

The market's Facebook page posts updated vendor lists every week (and we will post on our social media when we are going to be there.

We will then next be at the Christmas Spree Artisan Market at Memorial Park Church (Allison Park) on Friday/Saturday, November 1-2.

Our final planned event date is the NHIPA Craft & Vendor Fair -- as it has been for several years now:

Our honey prices remain unchanged as we continue to navigate fluctuations in glass prices (stocking up strategically on sales) and notably higher prices for the various other supplies needed to keep our bees happy and healthy (we have only raised them once since 2020):  https://dandelionapiary.blogspot.com/p/current-prices.html

We *should* have enough honey to get us through our current sales event commitments in 2024, but beyond that it gets questionable as our next harvest isn't until July 2025. Given that, I'll remind our email fans that real raw local honey never goes bad (!): first come, first served!  Remember that you can always email us to work out alternate delivery/pickup along the McKnight Road / Route 19 areas in the North Hills/Wexford or porch pickup at our house (near Shenot Farm in Wexford).  If we're home you don't even need to get out of your car-- we'll meet you out there if we know you're coming!

Follow our social media accounts:
https://www.facebook.com/DandelionApiary
https://twitter.com/DandelionApiary
https://www.instagram.com/dandelionapiary/
And there's a dedicated "BeeBurgh" playlist on YouTube here, with a look at our "operation":https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLX9waTQBfaIvQn-oAVmlRBSsssiYCQ7Js&si=u4W_Q-DyFsyI73lv

We will continue to send out email updates a couple times a year as news warrants.

If there are any edits to be made to your name/email address, please let us know...  And tell your friends/family/anyone who needs raw local honey where to find us and follow our social media.  

Thank you very much for your time, and we hope to catch up with you at one of the events this year!