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A Special Blend
By collecting nectar from various plants throughout the Garden, Blackberry Farm bees create a blend of honey that captures the unique essence and diversity of the Farm that can’t be replicated anywhere else in the world.
To better understand what defines the Blackberry Farm Honey guests enjoy on property, we reached out to Farmstead Manager Christen Waddell and beekeeper Charlie Parton to learn more about the harvesting process.
Where do Blackberry bees source nectar from, and what kind of honey does this produce?
There are eight hives at the Farmstead, each housing anywhere from 30,000 to 60,000 bees. A bee’s foraging range spans a one- to two-mile radius from its colony, so depending on the number of nectar-producing flowers in that radius, there could be small amounts of various types of honey in a single jar.
Tulip poplar, blackberry, clover and small amounts from various wildflowers are all present in our honey. It's a special mountain blend of everything blooming around our Farmstead that tends to be a rich and dark honey.
How do beekeepers harvest different types of honey?
To collect a specific, single type of honey, a beekeeper would need to harvest right before and right after that particular flower blooms. Harvesting before removes the previous type, and harvesting right after gives you the type that you are looking for. That way, the majority of the honey that is in that super (a box added onto a hive for bees to store honey) will be of a specific type. You could do this for any of the many flowering plants in the area, so there are almost innumerable types of honey that a hive could produce, but you would have to choose which ones you wanted.
We prefer to harvest honey that encompasses multiple nectar sources rather than pick a specific type. It creates a blend of honey that’s unique to the Blackberry Farm garden, where those bee hives reside.
How do honey harvests fluctuate throughout the season?
Different seasons are optimal for different flavors of honey. For example, tulip poplar is best harvested in the Spring, clover in between Spring and Summer, and blackberry during the Summer.
At Blackberry we have a relatively small number of hives, and we tend not to want to disturb them too often with frequent harvesting.
How has honey production looked this year?
It’s been a good year with 180 pounds harvested!