The culmination of nearly 12 months of bee keeping came to fruition today when I began to harvest my first honey. When extracting the honey I kept reminding myself that one bee produces one twelfth of a teaspoon of honey in its lifetime. Every few drops is the equivalent of a bees life work. The longer I keep bees the more fascinated I become.
The first task in the process is to uncap the honey. There is a thin layer of wax over each cell of honey to protect it because the bees are storing this not only to feed the new bees but also to get the bees that follow through the winter. It is an investment in the survival of their colony.
Here I’m using a honey fork to remove the cappings. There are other methods – some people use a hot blower to melt the wax and others cut it off with a sharp knife. I’m sure whatever method used it is a sticky job.
I had 6 frames and I had to uncap each side.
After uncapping them all I had a bucket with a mixture of honey and wax.
At the moment I don’t know how or if it can be separated and if so what I would do with it afterwards. Put it back into the hive for the bees to reuse?
I’m sure there is an answer.
After spinning two frames at time and then reversing them and reeversing them again to get both sides emptied I opened the tap and the honey began to flow.
The spinning process was a lot more difficult than I thought and the honey was thicker than I anticipated; it’s flow rate was incredibly slow. Perhaps on a warmer day it would have been faster.
I possibly went too fast on my first spin and managed to destroy one of the frames. The wax foundation became unwired and left holes in the foundation. It’s easily replaced but it was a lesson learned – it needs to be spun at a steady pace for some time to allow the viscous honey to find it’s way out of the cells.
Initially there didn’t seem to be a lot of honey at the bottom of the extractor but once I opened the valve and it started to fill the sieve I realised I might get several jars.
What I need to remember is that it isn’t the quantity but the quality.
As my good friend and bee mentor, Gary, said to me: “Lovely light honey. It really is magical when you think of all the time and effort you spend on the bees but in the end you do get this golden liquid that came from just outside your back door. What can be more local than that.”
Such a heartwarming thought and every time I take a spoon of this golden phenomena I shall think of the incredible superorganism that created it.
