Bountiful Bees of Broad Street

08/29/2026

08/29/2026

Metuchen Farmers' Market not sure how many years I've been here on behalf of Temple Emanu-El. Lots of questions about bees, lots of kids and perfect weather.

08/28/2026

I have two bucket perches - stainless steel brackets that hold the buckets on the lip of the bottling tank. One made by MannLake which is nicely made. One welded by me (also stainless) and is not as pretty.
The electric lift raises the buckets high enough to let me pour them into the tank then place - a skill ive gotten better at ( don't ask ).
I used to write unique names on the buckets ("Alpha"). Now the labels are more like A-1....A-2 written on tape attached to the lid.
Buckets as filled are logged against which yards are being extracted. There is a log also of buckets added ti the bottling tank.
Honey labels are generally tagged with invoice numbers which can be roughly matched against where the honey was harvested. Since the bottling tanked is only flushed and cleaned at the end of the year this only gives an approximation of where the honey was from

08/28/2026

Filling the bottling tank. Fill, bottle, label, repeat. Almost done pulling honey and extracting. Rosh Hashannah is early this year

08/26/2026

08/23/2026

The funnel part under the cap of this Walmart cocktail shaker...

Is perfect for placing strips of honeycomb in these chunk honey jars leaving the outside of the jar clean and not sticky

All you need is a metal punch to knock out this strainer insert which is just a friction fit (like an engine block freeze out plug)

08/23/2026

Pulled 10 supers this morning, from 5 hives which I combined into 3, fed some syrup but not too much, and applied a first treatment for mites.
I also found to my surprise that I had a super of unwired comb prepared for making chunk honey- 2x4 inch strips of honey to be placed in a jar which is then filled with honey. Two other prepared supers were ignored by the bees.
But given this wonderful weather I took a break. Back to extracting and bottling after another chapter of this HL Mencken biography by Marion Elizabeth Rogers.

08/19/2026

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1HgWV7ECDu/

08/18/2026

For some cooks this is a pasta container. For me, it's a hazardous material containment vessel and its cost will be treated accordingly as an expense on my Farm Schedule F.