Tuesday, October 20, 2009

♪ Honey From the Bees ♪

This is the end of the season for our first year of beekeeping. The bees need most of the honey they made this year to get through the winter, but a bit of it will also be enjoyed by us. Here is a frame removed yesterday that is partially filled with honey:

honey bee hive harvest
The wax frame expands as the bees fill the combs with honey. The bees then cap the cells with bees wax. To get the sweet liquid out, we will have to extract it. This wiki page gives good information about how that is done.

Here is another picture of the unopened honey combs, a bit closer:

honey bee hive extraction comb
I'll let you know how the honey turns out once we extract it from the honey combs !!

4 comments:

Julia said...

Wow! I always wanted to learn about bee keeping. I bought a book years ago but never got around to reading all of it. I'll be watching for more of your updates on the bees.

Doris Sturm said...

Congratulations on your success. I hope you will enjoy the honey and that your bees make it through the winter ok.

Thanks for sharing this update with us. I often wondered about you and your bees! Great photos, Kathryn!

Thank you again,
Doris ;-)

p.s. Just FYI, if you want to read an absolutely cute bee story, go read it on The Beneficial Bee's blog. They're beekeepers too and always come up with interesting stuff, but this is really funny:
http://www.TheBeneficialBee.blogspot.com/

Have fun!

Doris Sturm said...

P.S.
Ooops, sorry in that previous URL, just eliminate the word the, making it

http://www.beneficialbee.blogspot.com

Sorry about that!

Doris Sturm said...

Hi again, Kathryn! Thanks for voting on my blog and just to give you a heads up, I'm having a Halloween Trick or Treat Giveaway for my readers as soon as the Pet Costume Contest is over. It starts on the 29th through the 31st and I hope you can join!

Have a nice day!
Doris :-)