Feeling like a Pooh-Bear :)

We harvested Josiah's bees -- what an absolutely phenomenal thing to get to participate in!!! It turned out to be an entire family type affair, even my cousin Mark and his family came out to help. One of our home-school friends let us borrow her harvesting equipment this year (wasn't that sweet!?!?!?) We put bee-escapes on two days prior to our harvest - in theory they are supposed to allow the bees into the brood boxes (the honey they keep over the winter) but not allow them back in the top boxes called "supers" (the honey that we take)

It didn't work as well as we had hoped. There were still several hundred bees in the boxes when we pulled them. That made things a little more interesting. Tim hooked up the air compressor and with my helmet on, he blew the bees out of the frames. The kids, Mark, and I would grab the frames from him and run upstairs. Bees will follow the honey so we were hustling pretty fast!! I must admit it was amusing to me to watch Tim running around the car with an air compressor and a frame of honey covered in unhappy bees wearing a bee veiled helmet and SHORTS! He is crazy but a great sport about the whole thing. Josiah was out there with no veil, gloves or anything - he is as smooth as a cucumber. He blows me away with how good he handles these miraculous little creatures!!!

Once we got the frames upstairs we used a hot capping knife (a large looking instrument that reminds me of a pie server) It gets quite hot - we uncapped all the cells of honey dropping the cappings in a tank to drain out and then put the frames in an extractor which is little more than a large motorized tub with little supports that hold the frames. It spins the honey out into the tank and you drain it into yet another container (a five gallon bucket with four filters on the top that strains out any impurities.

We had such a wonderful time together -- there was lots of laughter - lots of spoons filled with gold honey -- lots of memories.......... Mark helped me after the kids had to leave to their various activities finish up with all the frames. The little guys kept running into the work room with spoons, grabbing spoonfuls and running off. At one point I had honey quite literally on an entire hand and running down my wrist - I DEFINITELY felt like a Pooh-Bear and the kids looked like a family of pooh-bears. I just need a (smack-smack) little smackrel (smack-smack) :)

To be honest I didn't have high hopes of getting a large quantity. We only had three super boxes to extract. When I looked in them I couldn't imagine us getting more than a gallon or two. I was fabulously surprised - we got EIGHT GALLONS of honey and several pounds of bee wax!! It is all just marvelous stuff too. I must add they say that the lighter colored the honey the better it is because it means that the flowers it came from are soft and sweet tasting, not strong like dandelions or knapweed. Before we harvested, Tim was joking that we should market our honey as noxious weed honey because we didn't know WHAT we were going to get but we were pleasantly surprised. The honey is sweet and light - it really is scrumptious!!!! We are so excited for next year's harvest!! Bees have been a great addition to our little menagerie - I'm so glad that Josiah wanted to do this!!!