The Rhythm of an Iowa Honey Season

🌱 Spring → 🌸 Bloom → 🐝 Nectar Collection → 🍯 Honey Ripens → 🧺 Harvest = Honey Available Until Next Summer's Harvest

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Every jar of honey tells the story of one season, one landscape, and thousands of hardworking honey bees.

 

Unlike many foods that can be produced year-round, honey is a seasonal harvest. Every jar begins with blooming flowers, hardworking honey bees, and a little cooperation from Mother Nature.

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Here in Iowa, our beekeeping season begins in spring. As the landscape awakens, different trees and flowers bloom in succession, each offering nectar for only a brief window of time. Black Locust typically blooms in mid-May, followed by Basswood (Linden) in June, while countless wildflowers continue through the summer.

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When nectar is available, our bees gather it one tiny drop at a time and bring it back to the hive. There, thousands of worker bees carefully transform that nectar into honey by removing excess moisture. Once the honey has reached the proper moisture content, the bees seal each cell with a delicate wax cap, preserving it until it is ready.

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Only then can we harvest.

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By late summer, usually in August, our honey crop is complete. That harvest becomes our entire supply for the coming year. From August until the following summer's harvest, every jar we sell comes from that single beekeeping season.

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Unlike products that can simply be manufactured to meet demand, we cannot make more honey once the season has ended. Our bees—and the flowering plants they depend upon—must wait for another Iowa spring.

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Every season is different.

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Some years, timely rains, warm sunshine, and ideal temperatures produce abundant blossoms and generous nectar flows. Other years may bring late frosts, drought, excessive heat, or prolonged rainy periods that reduce the amount of honey our bees are able to produce.

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Rain is a perfect example of nature's delicate balance. Honey bees need rain because it nourishes the trees, wildflowers, and clover that provide nectar. Without adequate rainfall, many plants produce little nectar, even if they bloom beautifully.

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But too much rain presents a different challenge.

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When rain falls, it washes much of the nectar from open blossoms. After the storm passes, flowers often need a day or more to replenish their nectar before they once again become a worthwhile food source for the bees. During extended periods of rainy weather, bees may spend several days with little opportunity to collect nectar—not only because flowers contain less nectar, but also because honey bees generally do not forage in the rain.

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​Honey bees generally don't leave the hive to forage when it's raining. Their wings become wet and inefficient, and raindrops are enormous compared to a bee's body, making flight difficult and dangerous.

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Every rainy day during a nectar flow is a day the bees cannot easily replace. A week of rainy weather during the brief Black Locust bloom, for example, can significantly reduce the amount of Black Locust honey available for the entire year.

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Weather affects every step of the process. Too much rain, too little rain, cool temperatures, high winds, or late frosts all influence how much nectar flowers produce and how much honey the bees are ultimately able to store.

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As beekeepers, we can provide healthy hives, monitor our colonies, and care for our bees—but nature determines the harvest.

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That's why some varietals sell out before the season is over, why quantities change from year to year, and why every harvest tells the story of a unique Iowa growing season.

We think that's part of what makes local honey so extraordinary. Every jar is a snapshot of one place, one season, and one year — captured by thousands of honey bees and preserved for you to enjoy.

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Honey Season Summary

Honey is harvested just once each year during Iowa's nectar flow, which typically runs from April through July. Once that season's honey has been extracted, strained, and bottled, that's the entire supply available until the following year's harvest.

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In other words, the honey you enjoy from August through the following July all comes from the same seasonal nectar flow. When a particular varietal or apiary sells out, we simply wait until the bees produce honey during the next Iowa honey season. That's one of the reasons every harvest is unique—and every jar is a limited taste of that year.