Yukons' Gold

      


      On my recent trip to Florida with no plan besides living in an "off grid" cabin and learning some sustainable living skills at the "Florida Earth Skills Gathering" one of the sweetest jobs happened to come knocking on my door (literally)

    A commercial bee keeper with an operation of roughly 1,000 hives was 4 miles down the road from my cabin. When his only employee had to suddenly leave, he was in need of an extra hand during the biggest honey flow of the year (the orange blossom.) I gladly excepted the job and began working 60hrs a week! It was all such a new and exciting experience, the long hours and weeks without a day off didn't bother me at all, it was fun and I was outside all day every day. YES. I did get stung, anywhere from 1 - 30 times in a day. Over time my body had built up an immunity to the stings and I was able to manage it better then most. Learning on the job very quickly as there seemed to be an endless amount of work. We had to get all 1,000 hives ready to transport 4 hours south of Gainesville, FL down to the orange groves. It took 2 semi tractor trailer trucks and 5 loads on the flat bed pickup trucks which we drove. The bees began their work right away as billions of orange blossoms flowered over many square miles, we cared for them and provided more space as the honey flowed in. In the end there was the transportation process moving them back north, then the extraction process and for me the bottling process. The honey is stored in 55gal drums and then sold in bulk for the most part. 99 drums was the total for this season, that's over 63,000 pounds of honey!!! I was able to bring a drum back to Maine with me which I bottled before making the trip north and Yukons' Gold came to bee. It was an unbelievable experience and bees are truly amazing. We cannot live with out them! If we humans could work together like a colony of honey bees our race would be a thousand years ahead and still thriving. The knowledge I learned and the people I connected with made for a priceless journey south for the winter.

             Cared for, processed, extracted and bottled by Yukon.