Honey Day!

Sept. 25th was Honey Day! We had to wait for a warm, non-windy day to go in and take out the honey frames from our hive. It was a perfect day, plus my Pops, Grandma and Grandpa and the Schocks were able to come over and witness the whole process.

Peter and I worked together to take the frames out, I shook the bees off and then Peter brushed off the rest with the bee brush. Then I ran each frame over to my Pops who guarded the box of honey filled frames with towel so the bees wouldn't fly back in.

Our bee hive totaled 4 boxes, the top two are the honey boxes (supers), which is honey for us, the 3rd one down is honey for the bees food supply in winter and some brood (baby bees), and the bottom box is mostly brood.

Then we brought the 2 boxes of honey frames into the kitchen and frame by frame cut off the top layer of wax that seals in the honey.

We hand spun the frames, 2 at a time, in the extractor for 5 minutes per side. Here are the Grandpas extracting honey. Most of the time we had the kids sit on the lid of the extractor so it wouldn't shake so much. It was like a ride. The kids also took turns spinning it so it was a pretty long process. After that the honey went through a series of strainers and into the big valve bucket.

Beautiful honey!

A couple of days later we filled the honey jars.

Our little bees made us around 50 pounds of honey! Our bees have definitely been way more of a success than our chickens (who have still laid zero eggs), less messy (except for this very sticky honey day) and way more tasty!