Harvest Above the Harbour

Harvest weekend. Clearing boards went under the supers on Thursday evening, and by Saturday morning the bees had politely vacated fifty-odd frames of capped honey, which then had to travel down six flights of a building whose lift was condemned the year I signed the lease. A full super weighs about as much as a disappointing dog. I carried seven.

The extraction happened in the sail loft, borrowed four-frame hand-crank extractor bolted to the workbench, every windowsill taped against robbing bees, floor papered like a decorating job. Uncapping with a bread knife warmed in a jug of hot water — the proper heated knife remains a fantasy I have every August and forget by September — then the long, meditative cranking, four frames at a time, until the drum sang and the honey climbed the walls in sheets.

The numbers, for the ledger: Lark gave nineteen kilos, Vesper twelve, thirty-one in total after straining. Down on last year, and the April artificial swarm accounts for most of Lark's shortfall — a swarm prevented is still a harvest halved. The honey itself is pale gold, mostly linden and bramble, with a mineral edge at the back that I privately attribute to the sea aster and cannot prove without paying a pollen lab.

Wet supers went back onto the hives at dusk on Sunday for the bees to clean and rob dry — over the crown board, empty box between, the standard burglary-proofing — and were gone again by Wednesday, licked to a shine.

What stays with the bees matters more than what left: each hive keeps its brood box plus one full super of stores untouched. The winter is theirs before it is anyone's. The landlord's rent jar was filled first, as per the lease's strangest and best clause; a dozen more jars go to the harbourmaster's office, the pharmacist, and the woman at the chandlery who lets me buy rope on credit in the spring. Honey is currency up here. The exchange rate is friendship.