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19th July, 2008 - Our First Honey Harvest Dan took a trip to the bee shop with his parents, Mave & Dave, in search of another early Christmas present.
In order to extract the honey from the bee hive, it's necessary to have the right equipment and Dans' parents very generously offered to buy the honey extractor.
Fresh back from the shop, everyone was keen to start our first ever honey harvest. However, patience is a virtue and so we all had the lunch that Tracey had prepared (all from the garden again).
After lunch, Dan made his way over to the hive to remove 2 of the frames from inside the hive.
As it's a bit too early to do a full harvest, we decided to only remove 2 frames just to see what it tastes like.
Besides, we'd run out of shop bought honey in the house and it would've been absurd to go and buy a jar, when we've got a hive full!
Obviously, the bees are very protective of their hard work and so once the frames had been removed, they had to be put in a bee-proof box to stop them trying to take their honey back.
With the hive back in place and the bees wondering what happened, we all moved inside to start the much anticipated harvest.
The first step is to cut the wax off of the honey frame, which is done with an extremely sharp knife, much like an oversized bread knife.
With the wax removed, we caught our first glimpse of our honey.
With the wax removed from both sides of each frame, the frames were loaded into the honey extractor.
The honey extractor works in exactly the same way as a salad spiiner, but it's much larger and rather than drying lettuce leaves, the centrifugal force "flings" the honey out of the honey comb where it then collects at the bottom of the extractor.
Once the honey has been spun out of the frames, it's time to drain the honey from the wax that was cut off earlier - you'd be amazed at how much honey remains "stuck" to the wax...far too much to be wasted!
With all the honey in the honey extractor, it's a case of opening the plug at the bottom of the extractor and letting the honey pour through a metal filter into a holding bucket.
As with the wax cappings, the honey extractor is scraped down to ensure that every last drop of honey passes through the filter and into the holding bucket.
When all the honey is in the bucket, it's just a case of waiting a few days for the honey to settle and any trapped air to escape. After that, the golden harvest can be bottled.
But...
... that's easier said than done!
None of us could wait and so throughout the whole extraction process, at every conceivable moment, everyone was sticking their finger in to taste the honey!
Honey is obviously the ultimate "high" from bee keeping, but what is perhaps more amazing is that, rather than washing all the equipment, you simply take the sticky equipment to the bees and over the next couple of days, they recover all the sticky residue!
Only when the bees have recovered their honey do we take the equipment back and then wash it...ready for the main harvest in a few weeks time!
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