Saturday night, I cozied up on the couch with Joe and Coco, and watched "The Secret Life of Bees." It was beautiful; one of my favorite books and movies, and felt ritualistic as we prepared ourselves for honey harvest. Our little guys had worked so hard for us all summer, and a little Queen Latifah action reminded me to send them love, goodness, and gratitude for their gift to us.
I'm going to go through this process for you, bees 101 if you will, because it is so entertaining. Until this summer, this was all foreign to me - yet it's amazing; one of the most perfect little civilizations ever formed...all inside a box.
You start, in the spring, by ordering a nuc - five frames which include a queen and a few thousand bees. You also order a hive - a wooden box with empty frames inside. You take out five empty frames, and put in your nuc frames full of bees and your queen. Throughout the summer, the bees fill all the frames with babies, honey, comb, etc. When they fill one box, you add another on top...and another, and another. Our hive this year had one deep and two shallow supers (extra boxes) added to the hive.
Today was harvest day. We took out all of the frames from the top two boxes, and three from the third box down - leaving a ton of honey for our bees to use as food. The goldenrod is blooming like crazy right now, so they will probably fill the supers back up with goldenrod honey this fall, and we may get one more small harvest in before winter. Before winter, you leave plenty of honey and a feeder for your bees inside the hive to eat while it's snowing!
On to the picture tutorial!!
Final count: Over six gallons (yes, gallons) of honey from our beautiful, productive honeybees!
The bees were really active last night and this morning; this is called the "front porch" of their hive.
Joe taking the lid off and smoking the bees to calm them. The smoke also covers any "panic" pheromones that the bees let off, so that they don't get each other all worked up.
Joe took out one frame at a time and gave it a quick tap on the ground to get all the bees off. He then put the honey filled frames in a tote and quickly put the lid on to keep the bees out :) The bees crawled right back up into the hive (probably close quarters while we had all of their frames !)
When he tapped the frame on the ground, the ground would become a "carpet" of bees.
He ran over a little honey and wax comb for me to chew on while he worked.
On to processing! We set up shop in Nigel and Emily's food processing barn.
Step 1: Hot knife down the frame to "uncap" the honey. The bees cap it with wax to keep the honey in the comb. We take the wax off, then put the frame in the spinner.
Video of Joe uncapping the honey...watch it flow!
Into the spinner.
Joe and Nigel - it's a two man job, really.
Thank you Allison for the spinner!!
Oh my ...it's so beautiful!
Back at the farm - I sent the honey through the strainer to get the wax bits and pieces out.
Everything Joe hot knifed off of the frames went into a big bowl - wax and honey.
I put it in the double boiler and let it simmer down so that the wax floated to the top, and the honey sunk to the bottom. When it cools, I will lift the wax off and make candles, or lip balm, or..I don't know? It's just so exciting!
We ended up with three different colors of honey from our one hive. The darkest came from the first frames on the bottom - the spring honey. The lightest is the most recent, probably honey from the thistle that's been blooming.
When we got home, Joe put all of the frames back in the supers, and put one super back on the hive. We'll keep an eye on the hive, and add the boxes back as they grow throughout the fall!
Back to school tomorrow, so I should go...Coco has an outfit to pick out people! xoxo, e.
My mind is SO blown by this. The feeling of being so close to all that humming, interworking life is incredible in and of itself. But fresh honey? That sounds like nirvana. :)
ReplyDelete