Honey harvest!

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Friends of mine are beekeepers, and about twice a year I get to go up and help them harvest honey! It’s an amazing process, and I’m so thrilled to be able to participate. I went up this past weekend and had a great time.

First you pry the hives open and smoke them in order to calm the bees down

Then you take the frames out, and score the wax caps in order to release the honey

Then the frames go into the spinner, where they’re spun around until the frames are fully emptied of their honey. If you look closely, you can see the honey flying out of the combs.

Then you drain and strain the honey through a nylon sock. It traps the wax and other particles in the raw honey. You can then boil the nylon sock in order to save the wax for other uses.

Once we’re done, it goes into cute little bottles ready for sale at Irwin’s General Store in Kazabazua. If you’re interested in buying some, let me know and I’ll put you in touch with the right people!

Culling honey is a messy business, and you will most definitely get it everywhere. Thankfully honey is antibacterial, which means there’s no harm in licking your fingers clean!

Here are some other neat shots I took of the process

Bee flying and eating honey at the same time

Dark honey from different types of flowers. The honey tastes different depending on which flowers they pollenate

Bee larvae

Newbies!

Posted on July 13th 2012 in Honey

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