Oh, Honey!

Our honey harvesting is over with for 2012-

the final total was 5 gallons from our hive and 6 gallons from Dad's hive!

I was very pleased that our little worker girls made that much in their first year with us,

but I think the fact that we had such an early spring and everything

was in full bloom in March really helped the bees this year.

I'm a nice enough person that I would never want to sell someone honey that was no good,

so I had to make a big batch of biscuits this morning to sample the product.

(It was a tough job but somebody had to do it... ; )

Here are some pictures I took of Hubby and I working with the honey-

These are the "supers" right after we took them off the hive-

supers are simply the boxes that hold the frames in which the honey is stored.

We took half of the honey the bees made this year and

left the other half for them to eat this winter. 

One by one the frames are removed and it's my job to "uncap" them-

the bees cover the full frames of honey with a coating of wax to prevent

the honey from running out in hot weather.

The wax has to be removed, or uncapped, for the honey to be extracted.

This electric knife is made especially for this job and once it's heated to the right temperature, it quickly uncaps the frames without hardly any mess.

This uncapping tub was a new addition to our beekeeping tools this year-

I saw one of these being used on YouTube and had to have one.

It was worth every penny, too- it made the messiest part of the whole process a snap.

The cappings then fall down into the top tub, which catches the wax on a strainer but allows any honey attached to it drain down into another tub below.

Whoever invented the uncapping tub- I love you.

The frames are then passed along to Hubby,

who places them into the extractor and "spins" the honey out of the frames.

As he extracts the honey it is slowly draining into a special pail with a coarse strainer on it,

and will need to be strained once more before it's ready to be bottled.

Meet Lily, our Quality Control Inspector.

The honey passing from the coarse strained bucket into the fine strainer-

And the finished product!

*YUMMY*

If you love honey, be sure to thank a little bee the next time you see one...

did you know it requires 10,000 worker bees to gather a pound of honey?

Happy Wednesday, everyone!