The last step to our first year of beekeeping: harvest the honey. We were able to borrow the vital tools- a honey extractor, wax melting knife, and the buckets to strain the honey- from the Eastern Missouri Beekeepers Association (Joe and I are card carrying members). We decided to harvest the honey in the late afternoon, which was a good and bad choice. Good because the day was beautiful, we had almost all of our family at my house to participate, and we have an open back yard which enables us to spread out. Bad because if we had started two hours earlier, we would have had every kind of bee from a 3 mile radius joining us in our harvest- the honey smell would have drawn them in, like moths to a flame.or bees to honey. Lucky for us, we waited- but not on purpose. My dad always said when you make a mistake in doing something, it should be called 'character'. Joe and I have a lot of character when it comes to our bees...
After we cut the wax caps off, we put the frame in the extractor to spin the honey out.
The extractor can hold two of those honey filled frames at once. The honey is forced out of the wax and collects in the bottom of the extractor.
After spinning, we opened the bottom to let the honey flow through a mesh filter- that removes all pieces of wax, pollen, or bee legs that may have somehow gotten into the honey. Last, we put it bottles and passed it out until it was gone. We kept the wax and melted into decorative candles. We figure we got about 30 pounds of honey from one box this year. Next year, we want to have 4 or 5 hives, so we will be in the honey for sure next season.
Melissa grilled some killer pork steaks with honey BBQ sauce...mm mm....
Back to the whole 'character' thing... we were too tired after our event to clean up outside, so we left it for the next day. Right. The back yard was out of bounds for two days while the neighborhood bees took care of our little mess. Now we know for next year...
