Sharing honey

One of the best parts about beekeeping is being able to share honey. I think it even tastes better when it’s free! We’ve already been able to share several jars and look forward to the continued sharing as the supply lasts. 

Today I had a crazy thought to share a little honey with the bees. I’m not sure if it was a good idea but someone had refilled our honey dispenser from a new jar…this has to be done rather frequently around here (we need a larger honey dispenser!) 

Once poured from the jar, there was just a little bit of honey left in the bottom of the jar. Now, I could have and maybe should have just washed it but where’s the fun in that? I was amazed at how the bees cleaned up the honey supers after the honey had been removed so I thought I’d see what would happen with this little jar. So, maybe against my better judgement, I placed the almost empty jar and lid on the deck outside the kitchen window to observe…

It was still fairly early when I set the jar out and within an hour or so I noticed a few bees. Now, if you have seen The Bee Movie, there is a part where Barry is literally swimming in honey…even going under to avoid listening to his mother lecture him. As you might have guessed the bees today were not as smooth in the honey as Barry in the movie! 

If you look closely you can see a few bees look to have drowned in the small amount of honey. Talk about feeling like a “bad beekeeper”. I’m not certain they were dead but they were drenched and a complete sticky mess. With that I decided to flip the jar over.

The bees and honey both slid down. What a mess. But I left it and within another hour or so more bees came.

As the day went on it got pretty buzzy out there. So much so that I was hesitant to let the dog out. She was not thrilled…

Having been fairly hands off with the bees since the honey harvest it was nice to have some of them close to observe through the kitchen window. 

By early afternoon they had successfully cleaned up the jar. No sticky mess left at all. Sadly, there were a few dead bees below on the deck. I guess they really did drown in the honey…however, they aren’t laying there with honey in them, I guess the other bees cleaned it off them, too, even though they were dead?!?!?! 🤷🏻‍♀️

In hindsight, this would not be something I would do regularly. I was curious and had fun with the little experiment but I hope I didn’t encourage bad behavior in my bees. I certainly don’t want them returning close to the house regularly for any reasons. I also hope it doesn’t encourage any robbing behaviors that could be detrimental to either hive. It also made me wonder…if I placed an empty sticky jar of homemade strawberry jam out there would they “clean it up” in a similar way or does it only work with honey??? Maybe that’s an experiment for another day?!!!?! But for now, I’ve come to the conclusion that we will only be sharing honey with family and friends. 

-Worker Bee 2021