Tuesday, July 06, 2010

liquid gold!

after 2 years of beekeeping and lots of time and money spent on this hobby, today i finally got to reap some of the rewards.* my parents were luck enough to be in town to share in the experience, which was exciting. unfortunately, the hubby had to go to work so he missed the fun.

this morning we went to my beekeeper friend's house and extracted honey from hive 2. it's all we'll get this year, but it was enough to satisfy us. we got 33 lbs! check out some pictures and video.

taking the caps off the frames
uncapping the capped honey.

the wax cappings that we scraped out
the wax cappings, which frank keeps and collects to trade in to the bee supplier.

half the frames waiting to be uncapped
the rest of the frames awaiting scraping and extraction.

the frames going 'round in the extractor
the frames going around in the extractor.

honey streaming down from the extractor and being screened for "junk"
honey dripping from the extractor and being strained for wax and other particles.

33 lbs of honey!
a final straining to get out even smaller particles. this is 33 pounds of honey. yippee!

full flickr set and another video here.

*there are some rewards in just raising the bees and watching them. but the real rewards come with getting honey, i think.


discipleassisi said...

WHOOOAAA MAMA! (Steve Urkel)

Firework Baby said...


Fuzzy said...


Margaret said...

you've convinced me. my next project is beekeeping.