Honey harvest!

One side of the frame full of capped honey.

So this weekend, my husband harvested our very first honey from our bees! He was waiting for them to basically fill the hive, so that they wouldn't be short come winter before we took any. Even then, we only took one frame and replaced it with a blank one so that they could immediately work on filling it up again.

He brought the frame into the kitchen were we took some photos. It is amazing how heavy it is! And so neat looking, too. (click on the photo to see it larger)

The flip side of the same frame from above - before honey comb removal begins.

Then he set about scraping all the honey comb off the frame. He put a small section into a plastic container to give to our neighbors, and the rest went into this stainless bowl. He then proceeded to mix it, making sure all the comb was well broken up.

Comb and honey are deposited in a bowl as they are removed from the frame.

Then he filled a 2 quart ball jar with it, stretched a clean nylon stocking over the opening, secured it with a ring and then inverted the jar on a second clean jar and taped them together.

About to begin straining!

About 5 minutes later, honey was already straining through the nylon hosiery and into the bottom jar - free of wax. When it's done (about 24 hours in a warm spot), we'll transfer the honey into small jars for storage and figure out how to clean up the wax. That'll also get saved for other uses.

The honey was delicious. It actually had a hint of flavor to it, but I can't place it. My first thought was almost a tangerine type taste, but that wouldn't make any sense. I'll just have to try more later (and keep trying) until I figure it out! ;-)

Bee's rock!

The Bees move in!

Disclaimer - I know very little about bees. We have a couple of books, and I plan to educate myself eventually, but since this is my husband's project, he's the expert right now. With his reseach and a lot of help from Ruhl Bee Suppy, he's quickly getting up to speed. Anyway, in lieu of a wordy post, here are a few illustrative photos.

The hive/box with a few frames removed (I'm sure there are more correct terms than 'hive/box' and 'frame' but whatever) and the bees awaiting installation in their new home.

10,000 Italian bees with a queen in there somewhere...

My husband in his 'bee suit' spraying sugar water on the bees to calm them before putting them in the hive.


The bees in the hive. Sorry about the quality of photo - but I was standing pretty far away at this point and using the silly little zoom lens on my point and shoot camera. It was also getting dark, so it's hard to see the bees flying around.

Since these photos were taken, my huband has reduced the size of the boxes. He's taken out the bottom one because apparently that's too much space for so few bees and they get confused. We can't have confused bees, can we?

Beekeeping

This is a photo from the Ruhl Bees site. That's the company from which we are getting our bees!

Beekeeping was one of those things that we felt was a good idea as we move towards self-sustainability. Not only are are bees a great way to provide a ready made healthy home sweetener, but they are essential for garden and orchard pollinization. We have so many blooming fruit trees that we felt it was a good idea to supplement the native Mason/Orchard bees with honey bees.

This one is Rick's baby. While I don't have issues with bees (I'm afraid of wasps and hornets), I also haven't had time to research them like he has. He made the variety choice, ordred all the equipment, and is on his way to pick them up this afternoon. We ordered our bees from Ruhl Bee Supply which is not only a 111 year old company - but local to us here in Oregon. http://www.ruhlbeesupply.com/

My only experience with bees in any quanity was when I was a kid. We lived in Topsfield, MA in a 100+ year old home. The front of the house was flanked with two huge hives built within the walls of the house. Random bee stings were a fact of life. I have two distinct memories of that time related to the bees. One was of my little brother waking up at night after it had been raining like mad crying because his bed was wet. My mother told him to 'move to a dry spot' thinking that he'd been the one to wet it. What a surprise to discover the next morning that his whole bed was pretty much wet with water and diluted honey! The rain was leaking through the walls and it ran right down his window shade and into his bed. Poor kid! My other memory involved the third floor. This house had a ton of rooms, most of which were not used by our little family of 4. There was an entire third floor of bedrooms (and presumably a bathroom, but I don't remember) that we pretty much kept closed off. I had a big doll house that I used to play with that was housed up there at one point. Anyway, I don't know why I was up there, but I remember standing in the doorway to one of the bedrooms staring in awe at the hundreds (or more likely thousands) of dead or dying bees lying everywere. It was like something that nightmares are made of!

Anyway, we hope that our bees will give us happy memories in the years to come. Once Rick gets the hive set up, I'll make sure to take some photos to share.