My lifes been sweetened with honey!

Couldn't be happier.....In a sugar coma heaven......Pure BLIZZzzZZZZzz.
    
      About a week ago I finally was able to borrow an extractor from an old boss who is a beekeeper. The extractor I borrowed from him was a hand crank operated spinner, and it held three frames at a time. as you can see in the photo it's a large piece of equipment. So I called my parents around 6pm and told them I was on my way with all the honey. They were both thrilled! (little did they know how messy and time consuming this project was about to be.) So I showed up with one honey shallow one extractor and a bucket.

          Ideally if you had all the snazzy tools that all the beekeeping books tell you to have, you would also be prepared with a heated knife tool however that's hogwash, your should always be resourceful all that fancy equipment will cost you a fortune and lets face it this is an expensive hobby, and one we do for the love of the bees. long story short i used a fork and scored the wax capping (over the basin) you can score both sides before placing your frames in the extractor however i've found its much less messy if you do one side at a time facing the scored side facing outward.
     
              Once you have three frames in your spinner....... Well? Start spinning! This is the fun part,at first anyway then your arm starts to go numb so get helpers. Make a party out of it. Get a bottle of mead cheese and crackers people will come!

            You'll know when you've drained the honey from your frames they'll still glisten but the honey wont pool up.Score the other side and repeat the spinning. Caution don't try and be Hercules with this. My dad thought he'd show off to us all by torquing on it so fast i thought it would start hovering. When I finally got him to stop so we could take a look , the other side was begin to sort of implode due to cylindrical force. It was pretty funny to watch though .

            So as you're spinning the honey and wax capping begins to pool in the bottom of the basin. This is where you need a clean bucket! place under then honey gate and here we go!! YUMMY I couldn't wait I stuck my finger in the sticky stream of honey it was tangy like citrus!

a naked beekeeper?

 

yesterday I was talking about singing to your bees, well this guy is taking it to a whole new level and clearly they love him for it. I don't play clarinet but I do play trombone, wonder how they'd like that?

the last day of bee school

               Last night was the end of bee school, after five night classes we all graduated into "beeginners" And with one season under my belt I felt like I had even more questions than if I was just beginning. (of course some of the information might have prevented a few stings)  Let me share with you a few of these things; smell is a very important factor when it comes to beekeeping. Think for a minute, if a bee can smell the nectar and fly miles to find it you can imagine how sensitive her sense of smell is so if you have even the lightest scent of say, BANANA or ALMOND and especially PERSPIRATION it will piss her right off she does not like the distraction, also each hive has a specific chemistry of odors going on which helps the bees to know that everyone is family and that there is no intruders (robbing honey) in their home. With that in mind it is best to wash with unscented soap, (I use glycerin because it is biodegradable) before you inspect your hives. The bees however will begin to recognize your scent and respond back lovingly if that is the aura that you release. Whistle to your bees or even sing to them, my bees really like it when i sing Joni Mitchell songs.

I'm really going to miss them this winter!

inspecting honey shallows

 

my really technical terminology is due to my overwhelming joy for all the hard work my ladies have done but what i mean to say is that they are producing so much honey that they are beginning to create burr comb and filling with honey to anticipate for the long winter ahead.

capping honey during prime nectar flow