Honey of a day!!!!

After "stealing" the two frames of honey from the "girls".. Ed and I have been waiting to process it. Fortunately for us, Deb and Dave have all the equipment to do that, so we only had to borrow it this year. We will need to purchase our own sometime, but for these two frames it was nice just to borrow. First step... uncapping the honey comb... this was done with an electric knife that is hot and the capping comes right off....

Abbie was here and she was so interested in how this all was done... she watched very carefully.....

She really wanted to do it herserlf... but Papa said another time....

The bees capped the honey to store it, so, in order to get the honey out, you have to uncap it. The "cappings" wax is saved and can be used to make candles or anything else that contains bee's wax.....

Now that the frame is uncapped, it's time to go in the extractor....

The honey frames are spun, and the honey just shots out of the comb. Abbie had a great time spinning the honey from the comb.....it drips down to the bottom of this steal tub....

And then you open the plug and the honey pours out. You use a very fine strainer to catch any little parts of wax and such....

I have to admit, we got more than I expected to get... so I can only imagine what it's like to get a full taking of honey....Once we strained it threw this strainer, we did it one more time, just to be certain that it was all ready to eat.... 

The empty frames go back to the bees, they will clean up any honey that we didn't get, they will clean all the combs, and will begin to put honey back in. And this way, they don't have to build new comb from stratch.

And here it is.. our very first jar of honey. I like the dark color.....(and yes...) it is VERY tasty....












From just those two frames, we got four and a half pounds of honey. I'll give a few jars away, but the rest we'll keep for this winter's treats...


thank  you bees!!!!