Honey, Honey Everywhere

And lots of drops to drink.

We transferred the honey from the bucket into jars last night. It was wonderful to watch it flow out of the honey gate, and having a box on the floor underneath it kept our kitchen from getting sticky.

The good news is that the honey continues to taste wonderful and is a beautiful amber color. We had it for dessert last night over frozen yogurt.

I can't really taste the lavender in it, but that doesn't mean it isn't there. Ellie and I tried a lavender-infused honey at a farmers market once; Ellie said the lavender flavor was overwhelming and I thought it just tasted like honey...


We filled up almost all the mason jars that we had in the house, 33 cups in total, or 29 jars of various sizes. That translates to about 25 lbs. of honey using the "Bee Honey Conversion Calculator". The shocking fact is that this came from one hive, and being the first year, I was only able to take six frames from it. If both hives produce like they should next year, we'll have 3-4x this amount! I don't think we'll have enough friends to give it all away.

We also have a good amount of wax left over, which we'll use sometime this winter during a rainy weekend to make candles. Thanks again to the bees! They are truly amazing creatures.

Honey Harvest, part II

Ellie and I prepared the kitchen for harvesting honey by placing cardboard boxes on the floor and counter to catch errant drips of honey. Then we started the process of extracting the honey from the comb. We used the crush and strain method, which means we cut out the comb from the frames, crushed it with a potato masher, and then poured the mixture of honey and crushed comb into a strainer. The honey goes through the filter, leaving the wax behind, and we should be able to bottle it today or tomorrow. I think that we'll make candles from the wax sometime this winter.

The honey was amazing. It has a zing to it. I think it has a hint of citrus. Ellie described as cough drop flavor but in a good way, which I didn't taste, but everyone has different buds. Here are some pictures from extracting along with a video of Ellie doing the crushing. Thanks be to the Droogies!

Ellie cutting out the comb.

Beautiful honeycomb about to be squashed.

Happy to be smushing.

Mmmmm.

Honey Harvest, part I

Hooray! Droogie 1 was kind enough to make us some honey! Yesterday I removed 6 frames from the hive. I removed the bees from the frames by shaking and then brushing them off with a bee brush. I've read that this process of removing bees can be a little intimidating for the novice beekeeper, and it was! I would have tried using my one way bee doors (Porter bee escapes) but I lent them to a colleague who hasn't returned them. In the video below, you can see my process of shaking the bees off of the frames and then brushing them. I was really surprised by how the bees then gathered around the entrance of the hive. Maybe they were waiting in line to go in?

Most of the bees were kind enough to stay behind with the hive, but a few stayed on the box that I put in the trunk, and a couple explorer bees found a way into the car through the rear speakers. This meant that I drove the hour home with the windows wide open, hoping that the wind would keep them stuck in the rear window. They were kind enough not to sting me while I was driving too fast down the interstate.