The Price of Honey

The Jar Of Honey

There are two ways to set the price of an item. One is based on supply and demand, the other is based on the cost to produce.

Honey, like other agricultural products is priced via supply and demand. As such it's priced relatively high, the supply being limited in regards to demand. If however you were to price honey, especially our little jar of honey, based on production cost, it would be worth more than it's weight in gold.

Yes we now have honey! No more bees, but one entire frame of honey.  During the recent January thaw we checked our bees only to discover that they had frozen to death. Most likely because there were not enough of them to maintain the 70 degrees necessary for survival. They did have plenty of stored honey so that wasn't the problem. They just couldn't stay warm enough to get to it.

The frame with honeycomb

And so as we were cleaning up the hive, shaking the dead bees and scraping the propolis  we decided to try our hand at harvesting a little honey.

Honey harvesting is described as a simple process of removing the wax cappings off the honey combs and extracting the honey using a centrifugal abstracter, basically a bucket onto which you load the frames and spin them around until the honey flows out the spout at he bottom. We didn't have an abstracter but we did have time and since we were only going to harvest one frame we figured we could tilt the frame up and let the honey drip down.

Cappings removed and
the drip begins

Two weeks later, it's still dripping, and S.D. has ordered an extractor.  So far we have one half a jar of the best honey ever!  I don't want to do the math but considering the cost of the hive, two packages of bees, an extra queen and all of the beekeeping stuff we needed, the cost of this little jar of honey is more than enough to make it one of the most expensive items, per pound, in our entire house.