After the long winter with so much snow, our bees are happy it’s spring. They are growing their colonies and bringing in pollen. So much pollen.
If you have spring allergies, we don’t have to tell you! Lots of folks feel local honey helps their allergies and are connecting for curb-side pick up of our delicious raw honey. Get in touch!
The bees don’t know anything about COVID-19 and are doing their thing–no social distancing in the hive while they bring in the nectar and make honey.
We have honey available and will harvest 2020 spring honey in a few weeks!
If you’ve been trying to email us with no answer, please call 973.744.0701–our web hosting site has been having intermittent email problems!
Can it be that Spring is around the corner? The weather keeps us guessing, but any day now! Along with warmer weather and sun come flowers–and seasonal allergies.
If you use local honey to treat your allergies, just get in touch–we’ve got plenty of local, Montclair honey!
If you’re looking for a local holiday gift that says “Montclair” or even “New Jersey” think about our local honey. We have both spring and fall honey available. The spring honey is a light, fragrant wildflower honey. The honey from the fall is dark, rich and tasty. Both are raw, unfiltered, made and extracted right here in Montclair.
Hi Everybody!
We’re going to be selling honey at two pop up shops very soon. This is the first time that you can come and buy straight from us! You can pick up great gifts for Christmas, or just buy some fresh, local, honey.
Location #1: November 25th 10am-6pm
Holiday Maker’s Market, 490 Bloomfield Avenue, Montclair, NJ.
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Location #2: December 2nd 10:00am-2:00pm
Edgemont School, 20 Edgemont Road, Montclair NJ
Can’t wait to see everyone!
Thanks,
Oliver
Hi Everyone,
We’ve recently extracted and bottled some rich, dark, fall honey. The big difference between Fall and Spring honey comes from the flowers that it was extracted from. In New Jersey the darker fall honey comes from Japanese Knotweed, a plant that blooms much later than other plants, and gives honey a distinct color and flavor. Since it’s one of the only sources of nectar in the fall, all our fall honey is much darker, but still just as good!
Japanese Knotweed gives the honey a deep, buckwheat taste. It’s very different than light honey, but it’s definitely worth a try. If you’re interested in buying some, you can contact me at oliver@essexgirlhoney.com or 973-744-0701.
Thanks,
Oliver
Hi Everyone!
Great news, we have finally harvested, extracted, and bottled the honey that the bees have been making over the past five months. It’s been a long process; the bees begin to forage again once flowers have started blooming, and the temperature has started to rise. This normally happens around mid March.
After they become active, they get checked on about once a week, to make sure all is in working order, and there’s nothing wrong with the hive (parasites, not enough food, not enough room). This year we had problems with hive space, our eight hives were expanding quickly and swarming often. Swarming occurs when there is not enough room for all the bees in the hive, so half leave with the old queen to try and find a new home. These bees are docile, having gorged on honey before taking flight, and can easily be recaptured and put back into a new hive. With the bee population exploding we knew that we’d have a lot of honey this year.
Over the course of two days, we managed to extract all the honey that was made over the spring. We filled around nine 5-gallon buckets. We have yet to bottle and label all of it, but that will be done soon. Right now, we have around three boxes of honey, with more to come. Our prices are staying the same at $10 a pound, and $6 for a half pound. If you want to buy some you can contact me at oliver@essexgirlhoney.com , or my home phone 973-744-0701.
Oliver
Hey everyone!
Unfortunately, we are all out of honey. It’s been a great season, and the bees are working hard to produce more. In fact, all seven hives survived the winter. Bees commonly die in the winter for a multitude of reasons. When winter begins all the bees cluster up at the bottom of the hive, and slowly work their way to the top eating their stored honey as they go. If the hive is weak going into the winter, the bees will not have enough honey and starve to death. Even if the bees do have enough honey, they can still move up the hive too quickly, or break their cluster too early. We have never had this many hives after winter, and we are optimistic that we will have lots of honey, early in the year. Hopefully around Father’s Day.
Tis’ the season!
Our honey makes a perfect holiday gift!
It’s straight from our backyard, and it tastes great. It costs $10 for a pound, and $6 for a half pound.
This time of year, I often get questions on what our bees do during the winter. The bees cannot survive alone outside in the cold, so they cluster together inside the hive to generate heat. In this cluster, they slowly work their way from the bottom of the hive to the top, eating honey that they have stored along the way. However, during this process lots can go wrong. Sometimes the bees work their way up the hive too fast, and once they’re all the way up they do not go back down, other times the bees do not store enough honey and starve. It’s a hard life to be a bee!
Over the winter of 2015 we lost 2 hives, this year we’re hoping to lose none. New Jersey beekeepers will normally lose around 25% of their hives over the winter.
Right now we have plenty of honey, however orders quickly pile up, and we are normally out by mid-February. You can email me at oliver@essexgirlhoney.com, or call 973-744-0701.
Oliver.
Today is the first day of Spring everyone!
It was a rough winter for our bees: we lost three hives, but we still two thriving hives.
We’ll be buying more bees soon, so we can be prepared for the upcoming honey season. We still have honey from last year left over, but not much! If you want to purchase some contact me at oliver@essexgirlhoney.com or leave a message on our phone (973-744-0701)
-Oliver