Thieving from the Bees

The honey harvest is on! Actually it's probably just about over. We've been harvesting from our three hives for the last 5 weeks and have collected almost 20 gallons of honey! The really amazing thing is that our little backyard Langstroth is kicking the butts (honey volume-wise)of the two hives we keep at a local garden center. We have wild blackberries and fennel to thank for their success, both of which are blooming like crazy in the creek behind our house. And both of which are quite delicious themselves, I might add! We've been eating blackberries on our cereal in the morning and making tarts and scones. Fennel is super delicious too, but I haven't quite figured out how to harvest it or use it. Another project in the making. I like that the blackberries help the bees, and the bees help the blackberries, and the whole fabulous cycle gives humans extra delicious things to eat. Definitely a win-win-win situation.

We use the crush and strain method of harvesting. Basically, you have two five-gallon buckets. One on the bottom, with has a big hole cut out of its lid and a spout at the bottom; and one on top, which has lots of holes drilled in the bottom and a nylon sieve inside. We crush up the honeycomb until we have a thick and lumpy honeycomb/honey soup. Then we pour the soup into the top bucket, where the honey separates, trickles through the sieve and top bucket and collects in the bottom bucket, where we can open the spout and fill bottles of honey.

Once the honey drains from the wax, we remove the wax and render it, pouring it into 1-quart paper milk cartons. When in cools, we remove the milk carton to reveal these gorgeous, light yellow, wax pillars that smell like honey. We wrapped them up and put them in a cardboard box to be made into candles or quilter's wax at some point. But we can't leave them alone. Every time someone comes over we have to take them out and make everyone smell them and say that they are wonderful!

We have sold several bottles of honey to friends and colleagues, and we're working out the details of getting honey on the shelves of the garden center, where two of our hives are housed. The garden center folks are super excited to have honey from their very own grounds, and so are we!