Bees and Their Yummy Honey

 Last week while we were working on moving I also extracted all the honey from my bee hives. It made for a busy week. But a very sweet week too with all the honey eating. :-) The middle of August is a little earlier than prime extracting time which is early September but I did not want to move hives that we stacked high and full of thousands of bees.

  Above I was showing off on of the frames that was just beautifully loaded with capped honey. Not all of them look so nice but a lot of them did.

 A close up picture of the capped honey comb.

 The kids did all get to help again and we all ended up nice and sticky. The extractor is run with a very powerful drill and so for the kids it works best to have a helped or so to hold things still. Mara is really not as plump as it looks in the picture above - she simply has her shirt being puffed up with the air blowing up from the extractor.

The picture of the frame about shows some of the brood including some queen cells. I pulled everything out of the hives and either brushed away or vacuumed up the bees this year. I had not ever wanted to do that again after vacuuming them up my first year but my attempts to overwinter them the last 2 years were unsuccessful and it didn't seem like this year was a good year to try again with all that we have going on with moving and building. So I killed them off but next year I want to study up on things and try overwintering again. I have been getting Italian bees which are one of the most gentle and good producers but I was visiting with another beekeeper up here and he said that Carnelian bees overwinter much better and aren't that aggressive either and also produce really well. I will be looking into those. If I change I will have to get packages rather than NUCs which would be something new for me.

Jonathan straining the honey. (I think he did some taste testing too.) This will be our last time of extracting just right out in the garage Lord willing. Next year we will have a special room set aside just for extracting and other bee stuff. That will be very nice! Currently it is our bedroom though so that bees have to wait until we move into our house.

  This was our lowest honey year yet but we still were incredibly blessed - getting more than many people ever get from their hives.

  I would love to hear any thoughts or advice you might have on bee keeping.

Meanwhile I am looking forward to an apple crisp that is sweetened with honey that I have cooking in the crockpot just now - getting ready for breakfast.