Out of the Comb and Into the Bottle

I miss writing about bees!  The world has slipped away from me these past few months, but I'm slowly finding my way back.  

For those of you who bought honey from me this season, here are some photos of how that magic was extracted from the hive, poured into bottles, and placed in your mouth.  Look at that photo above.  Hours and hours spent working in the hive lead up to that.  A heavy, dripping, crawling-with-bees frame of honey.  Yes, please.

Shhhh...that's my glove in the photo!  I have become fairly well-trained at judging bee temperment, and these ladies were feeling pretty hot that a bear in white clothing was messing with their honey.  So on they go.

After sitting in a hot room for many days, the frames are removed from the hive box and prepared for extraction.  That's an electric uncapping knife that we use to scrape off the wax cappings that seal the honey in the cells.  It's very hot and melts the wax on contact. 

These are frames in various stages of preparation.  All heavy, all luscious, all just sitting there waiting to release their honey.

A freshly uncapped frame of honey.  Look at that glowing world inside those cells.  Perfection!

Thank you, Karessa, for letting me use your extractor.  And your kitchen.  And your hot room. Those are heating coils to keep the honey flowing.

This is the fun part - using the hand-cranked extractor to spin honey from the frames.  No, those are not my arms.

After the honey is extracted, it needs to go through a strainer to remove large chunks of wax and the occasional bee wing or leg.  Raw honey is the best, but it requires a bit of attention at the start.

Sticky, sticky, sticky.  Everything gets STICKY.

After several levels of filtering, the honey is poured into gallon-size glass jars to sit for a few days.  This allows air bubbles to dissipate and wax to collect at the top for easy removal. 

Cappings wax is literally a hot mess.  But think of the possibilities!

The extractor is a disasterous mess, so outside it goes to be cleaned up by the bees.

 

And just like that, you have summer in a bottle.