Ok, honestly – this is a very interesting hobby; it’s taken a little pain, some heavy lifting, swollen limbs, a swarm with some frantic phone calls, and given us some incredibly fascinating moments. One of the coolest things in our short beekeeping careers that has happened so far this season, however, is the Sandwich Fair, an agricultural fair held in Margaret’s hometown of Sandwich, NH, just about a month ago.

As you know, Marg extracted the honey into two big beautiful mason jars.

She then carefully poured some of the honey into three separate one pound glass honey jars, we drove them up to Marg’s parents’ house and Margaret’s mother entered them into the Town Fair for us.

When we went to see how our honey did the next day, we saw that it had won Best In Show!

We’re not really sure exactly what the rules are for judging the honey, but a review online of honey judging leads us to think it has to do with the percent moisture (most rules require less than 18% water content), clarity, color and taste, presentation, and closeness of fill to one pound (in our category which was extracted raw honey). The credit here all goes to Margaret, she did a great job filling the jars and measuring them to one pound, not to mention patiently extracting the honey.

It’s nice to have some success our first outing into Beekeeping. Now we’ve got to get them through the winter!

For now, though, we can smile!