Our last stop on our summer ag tour was the Hunter’s Honey Farm. Hunter’s Honey Farm is over 111 years old, the specific farm we visited being in operation for about 22 years now.
Before we started our tour, we were able to shop at their store. With an abundance of products, we just didn’t know what to get! From honey teriyaki sauce to honey lotion bars, the store was packed with honey-related products (the strawberry honey roll-ups were my favorite)!
After, we met Ben at the hives. He used a smoker to calm the bees. Bees actually communicate through pheromones, so when they smell the smoker, they think that there’s a fire, so they start eating a bunch of their honey thinking they’re going to have to relocate it. Doing this fills them up and makes them sleepy, creating that “calming” effect.
Ben let us get a close-up look at one of the hives by showing us one of the frames. He showed us the middle bracket, which is typically the nursery of the hive. The farm actually has around 800-900 hives! That’s a lot of bees! They have 2 workers that take care of the hives on the farm, which means checking to make sure the hives are thriving, and if they’re not then helping them when needed.
Hunter’s Honey Farm also actually transports some of their bees to Florida during the winter! The warm climate in Florida is good for honeybees as they can still fly around and the queen can continue laying her eggs.
Ben taught us some cool facts too! Did you know that honeybees have a better sense of smell than canines? Honeybees can actually be trained to detect explosive residue! Or did you know that the flavors of honey depend on the floral source?
After checking out the hives, we headed back inside where Mary gave us a tour of how they collect the honey and process it. Using machines, they take the coat of wax off to get to the honey. After, they move the frames with honey into a centrifuge so they can easily access the honey.
Mary also showed us how they make candles! They have a bunch of different molds where they poor wax into to make different designs!
We even got to make our own candles! They gave us all a strip of beeswax and we put a candle wick at the beginning and rolled the beeswax to create a candle. We had so much fun! To end off our tour, they also let us fill up our own bottle of honey (which we definitely didn’t have trouble with getting past security at the airport! You will have to ask for the details on that!).
Seeing the bees in their hives making honey, to being able to see just how much we can make from them was amazing! We had an amazing time at Hunter’s Honey Farm and it was a great way to end off our summer ag tour of 2023!
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