Owen's Honey Hive

Getting ready to extract our second harvest of the season. Hope it turns out as well as our last (pictured here).

And...We Have Honey!

And... We Have Honey! The Latest Happenings with Owen's Honey Hive

We've added to our bee family! Last week we transferred two nucs to our news hives. Plus! The split we thought didn't make it has brood, so now we're up to 5 colonies. We're also trying something new this year. While we love our horizontal hives, we've decided to try insulated hives from HiveIQ (Hi Zavier!). Since the bees won't have to work as hard keeping cool during our hot Mississippi summers, they'll be able to spend more time making honey.

Check out my blog post https://wix.to/KI2zfnL

What's New: April 2024 The Latest Happenings with Owen's Honey Hive (And an Answer to the Big Question -- Will We Have Honey Soon?)We know we've been quiet over the last months, and for that we apologize. It's been a busy winter between getting our bees ready for the Spring, work and school. Now that Spring is here, we're...

A few weeks ago we checked on our bees. Apparently when we previously checked the hives we forgot to cover the frames before closing the lid. When we opened the hive back up this is what we found. The ladies certainly know how to stay busy.

Happy Thanksgiving

And a huge thank you for all the support you've given us on our new honey adventure. We are truly thankful for each and every one of you. Owen & Alexa

Today's fun bee fact.

Did you know?🧐 A honey bee’s body is specially designed to make honey!

Honey bees ingest nectar from flowers and store it in their “honey crop,” or “honey stomach,” an organ containing enzymes that change the pH balance and chemical makeup of the nectar.

When the foraging bees return to the hive, they pass the nectar to younger house bees, who keep passing the nectar from bee to bee. This process continues to break down the nectar into more simple sugars and reduces the water content.

After the nectar is placed in the comb, the bees dehydrate it further by fanning their wings.

Once the water content reaches 20% or less, it’s ready to be sealed with wax caps!

This is a basic overview of the process, not an extensive dive. The fact that honey bees just inherently know all the ins and outs is one of the coolest things about them!

Even David Beckham & Co are into beekeeping.

Great to see Beckham harvesting his Flow Hives as the opening in his latest Netflix doco. So good to have our important honey bee pollinators highlighted in homes all around the world.

Our hives for our next two colonies arrived today. We decided to try something new - insulated hives from HiveIQ. We can't wait to assemble them and show them off.

Ever wonder why honey crystallizes? Here's a good explanation.

Why does honey crystalize? It's complex – but it has a simple fix. Honey crystallizes when there's too much sugar for how much water is in the mixture – but it's easily reversed by running under warm water.

📸 PHOTO OF THE DAY

Owen and I attended our first bee conference yesterday - Bee Alive Conference & Expo in Slidell. It was fantastic! Learned a ton and had fun shopping with the various vendors. Looking forward to next year's conference.

Owen, my oldest Bee and I are heading up to Hattiesburg in the morning. Any orders that come in after 2pm today will be processed after we get back on Sunday and mail orders will go out on Monday. Thanks!

It's Honey Time! The time has finally come for Owen's Honey Hive to start selling honey! All of our honey is open for sale on our website. You can order online by going to https://www.owenshoneyhive.com/order-online . We offer shipping via USPS, as well FREE pickup and delivery in Long Beach, plus delivery within 10 miles of Long Beach for a minimal delivery fee.

Thank you for your patience and all of you support. Owen and I are excited to supply you with lots of delicious Long Beach honey.

We have honey. It's all bottled and ready to be sold. We have our LLC in place and our tax license, but we've hit a snag in an application we have for another license we need in order to sell. We are diligently working to have the situation resolved and get our honey on the market. Although you can't buy the honey at the moment, we do have it posted in our online store for you to take see. You can find out store at www.OwensHoneyHive.com . In the meantime, while we're working out the snag, we're going to get to work on creating our beeswax-based products. We're really excited about them and can't wait to share those with you too.

Thank you again for your patience! We appreciate it and all your support.

Our honey is straight from the hive. 100% pure, raw and unfiltered.

Owen with his first jar of honey!

Several people have been asking, "Now that you've harvested the honey, when can buy some?" So, I thought I would give a quick update on where Owen's Honey Hive is when it comes to selling honey. The quick answer is that we'll be selling soon, hopefully in a few more weeks (or sooner!). While we have the honey harvested and we're in the process of bottling, we're still waiting for several things to happen, namely being approved for our Mississippi Sales Tax License as well as our business license from the City of Long Beach. Once those are both in place we'll be ready to sell. If you want to be the first to know when the honey goes on sale, be sure to subscribe to our website at www.OwensHoneyHive.com .

Home | Owen's Honey Hive In January of 2022 my then 12 year-old son, Owen, came to me and said, "Mom, I want to get some beehives and sell the honey." His statement came out of nowhere, but we must have been somehow synced with the bees. "Funny you should say that," I responded. "I've been thinking...

We have honey! Today was extraction day and we harvested our first frames of honey. To say we're excited is an understatement. There are still a few things we need to put in place before we're ready to sell, but it's coming!. Subscribe to OwensHoneyHive.com to be the first to know when our delicious honey is for sale. And yes, it *is* delicious!

Owen assembled our new toy today -- our honey extractor! We anticipate extracting our first harvest this weekend and are so excited about it!

Just put up a new blog spot! Check it out here...

Our First Hives First-Year Beekeepers Take on the Challenge of Building Our First Hives When someone thinks of a beehive, more than likely they're picturing a tall stack composed of boxes placed one on top of another like in the picture to the right. Called the Langstroth Hive it quickly gained popularity after its...

Catching up on my beekeeping class! I'm off from work the next week or so and am using my time for the bees.

Today's bee facts.

Side by side, the Queen and Worker are easy to tell apart. But did you know? There’s another distinction that isn’t so easy to see.👀🐝

Their stingers!

Both queens and workers are equipped with this defense, but where a worker bee can sting only once, the queen can sting multiple times.

Queens reserve their stinging power to fight other queens, so it’s unlikely you’ll be stung by one.

The worker bee, however, stings to protect the hive and is very likely to sting when she feels threatened. Her stinger is barbed and stays in the skin of the victim. As she flies away, the stinger and venom sack are pulled out of the worker bee, causing internal injuries that will be fatal in minutes.

The stinger of both bees (queen and worker) also functions as the organ that lays eggs! How cool is that?

Owen did a great job today doing his first solo hive inspection. All's looking good with our bees, and best of all is the capped honey!

So many of the foods I love.

Honey Bees are important to us!

This week's reading! We had some burr comb in our hives, so we're taking the opportunity to learn about processing beeswax and making candles and other beeswax products.

The Princess of Wales is celebrating World Bee Say too!

Princess of Wales pictured wearing keeper's suit to tend beehive on World Bee Day Royal residences are home to a number of beehives, while the Queen is also a keen apiarist with the honey sold to raise money for charity.

World Bee Day -- May 20, 2023

First bloom in the wildflower garden I planted (what feels like forever ago) for the bees.