How Sweet It is

Now I am sure that many of you think that all we do is take care of bees and then Steve fishes - and yep - there is a lot of truth to that!  We had plans to have something else to put up here this week-end but then I stoved up my shoulder and we had to put those plans on the back burner - so we still had to extract honey this week and so I was ready with my camera in action.  We rarely get Spring honey - it seems we are always waiting until the end of the summer, however, this year, we did well.

These are allllll the "supers" we brought in filled with frames of honey.  the piece of machinery on the left is the Extractor, and we will put frames of honey in this and it will literally "fling" the honey off as it spins and then drain down into the bucket.

The frames in the Extractor:

Now you can literally see the honey there in the frames - it doesn't look like that because the honey is actually capped and Steve takes a hot knife (special one) that scrapes off the caps so that the honey will flow:

Now once the frames have spent several minutes "spinning" in the extractor he opens the valve and voila - the honey flows:

This is a beautiful sight to those of us that enjoy this sweet stuff.  My personal favorite is to mix honey with peanut butter and make an apple dip - yumm, but oops - I got distracted there for a minute. 

He has another piece of equipment that he places the "scraped off comb and wax" into and it will separate it from the honey so that we don't have any waste - we used to feed all the waste back to the bees but now we are more efficient:

The honey has to be checked for its moisture level - very important so the honey does not actually go bad on you - note that once the honey is completely capped that is usually all ready to use but sometimes there are still some cells that are not capped so the moisture level is checked - he actually checked two different ways the other night - one if pretty simple - holding the frame up and shaking it - if any moisture falls down (honey) then it is not capped:

the "splashes of honey" did not pick up in the camera here but this one was still too moist and had to be put in the "back to the hive" box.  there is another little gadget that Steve has where you put a teaspoon of honey in from the frame

and the little gadget measures the moisture content of the honey:

So there's your trip for Saturday with Steve to get an idea of how honey is extracted.  There is a lot of work involved in this entire process and people tend to think that we just sit back and wait for the "girls" to bring home the honey - there's a lot more that goes on.  Hopefully this gives you a gimpse into that world.  Thanks for stopping by and those of you that were here at the open house - you can still see the boxes of stamp sets all boxed up - had to get them moved out of the way quickly before he started with all this sticky mess.  Thanks for dropping by.  One last thing - here's one of the beauties that I received from Miss Ruby in the mail - isn't this amazing?  This card is not leaving my home - will find a small frame to put it in - what an incredible amount of time she put into this - thanks so much Ruby!  Have a great week-end. 

Comments

[Mary]

Wow! I never realized how much goes into the extracting of honey from "comb to home" -- especially the information about the moisture level. So glad you could get an extra harvest this year, too.

Ruby's card is gorgeous! It's a "keeper" for sure.

[Bev Wolverton]

Thanks for all of the bee lessons. Very interesting. I love Saturdays at your place. The card is FAB.

[dominique nashed]

very nice informations,i knew some steps,of course not everything

[Krauss]

Now....we dont have to stay up all night at convention learning about bees....We can get it all right here with Saturdays with Steve....Love it. Love Miss Rubys card too....she rocks.

[Terri C.]

Very interesting info on the honey.
I love Ruby's card. Yes, she did spent a great deal of time on it, and it shows. Lovely!!!

[Michelle]

Very interesting!!! Beautiful card.