Sugar Pie, Honey Bunch...You Know That I Love You!

So, this is our first year with an official honey harvest from our bees.  And by "our bees" I mean my hubby's bees that he handles completely while I take the occasional picture.  I've only been stung once in my life, I was 7, and don't really want to remember what it feels like.

I came home last Friday to find my hubby and his friend in our kitchen with honey harvesting equipment strewn about on every available space.  Nightmare visions of myself attempting to scrub honey off of my kitchen appliances for the next several months danced in my head.  But, I should have never doubted my boys.  They did an amazing job and even cleaned up after themselves.  They had a moment of panic when they realized that the heated knife had melted bee wax onto my granite countertops, but relaxed when they realized that granite is tough and bees wax can eventually be scrubbed off of it.

Harvesting honey turns out to be quite an interesting and amazing process.  First the "caps" must be cut off of the honeycomb.  When the bees have completely filled the comb with honey they cap the whole thing off with more wax to keep it safe.  Then the frames with honeycomb are put into the extractor and spun until all the honey has been forced out of the comb and onto the sides of the extractor.  Then the extractor drains into a food grade bucket with a filter to purify the honey.



Honey transferring from extractor to filtered bucket

Honey being filtered

Then the honey gets added to jars.  In the case of our friend that means "chunk honey" which includes a bit of the comb in the jar as well. 

Then it just needs to have a lid added and it's ready to be enjoyed. 



Saturday morning brought the processing of my hubby's honey.  He wanted to do a double fliter of the honey which took a little longer so we decided to wait until the next day to put it in jars.

That's a lot of honey and we haven't even finished harvesting. 

It's super clear and beautiful.  I don't even like honey and this made me want to start brainstorming recipes so that I could use it. 

A special half gallon had to be pulled out for our friend Kenna, the highly allergic to bees, honey lover.  Without her we wouldn't have started on this little adventure.   

Not bad for our first harvest.  30 - 9 oz jars and an additional 1/2 gallon.  At this point I was having a hard time keeping my hubby and his sister, Becky, from bolting to the fridge for some yogurt on which to pour this beautiful honey.

It's so pretty I can't seem to stop taking pictures.  Even if they are being taken with my Blackberry. 

All packaged up and ready for the Quilcene Fair. 

I do have to say that this was a super fun and exciting little challenge.  I can't wait until the hubby checks in a few weeks to see if we have more to harvest.  I'm not sure how all these farm-like/self sustaining projects happened, but I'm sure glad they did.  I love that we get to share with our family and friends the little joys that we've slaved over.  

Happy Honey Day Everyone.