The Honey Harvest

Last Sunday, after my visit to Catalan Farms, my son and I prepared to harvest some honey. I've spoken quite a bit in previous articles about the difficulties that I've had with the new hives this year. The good news is that the established bees from last year seem to be doing quite well. So whatever the affliction, the stronger colonies seem to be able to withstand it. This year was not a complete bust. While very small, there was indeed some surplus honey for us humans to enjoy.

After collecting the frames of golden honey, we headed over to neighbor Steve's house. Last year, Steve and I, together with another fellow beekeeping neighbor, went in even on honey extraction equipment. Steve is a year ahead of me in terms of establishing his colony. Last year we got to sample his bee's miracle. This year, we get to see what mine can do. We decided the easiest thing to do was to transport the frames over to his house and do the extraction there.

Bees are orderly creatures. When they finish filling up a honey cell with delicious honey, they cap it off with a nice cap of wax. The first step in extraction is to perforate these caps so the honey can flow out. There are many ways to do this including electric capping knives that get hot and slice the caps right off. Well, we used the "poor man's" tool called a scratching tool. In the photo on the right you can see the tool; essentially it is a series of needles on a handle that you rake across the comb, perforating the caps so that the honey can come out.

Once the caps are scratched, we placed the frames in the extractor. The extractor is essentially a centrifuge. The frames are placed inside, and are spun at high speeds by cranking the handle. The centrifugal force (okay, for physics folks, there is no such thing, but this isn't a physics class now is it :) pulls the honey out of the cells where it sticks to the walls and slowly slides down the sides, collecting at the bottom. There it creates a gorgeous pool of honey. We repeated this step multiple times until all the frames of honey had been evacuated.

The evacuated frames are just the empty comb with scratched caps. These frames I put right back into the hive after extraction. One of the benefits of writing this article post-facto is that I can report that I peeked inside a couple of days ago, and the little bees had already finished repairing most of the damage to the comb from the extraction, and the had cleaned out and repacked the residual honey. Harvest season over, their work now is for them alone.

Back to the honey harvest, we can now open the gate at the bottom of the extractor and watch the beautiful dark amber honey flow out! This is strained through a double strainer to remove the little pieces of wax that came from the broken caps. The pure honey flowed through the strainer (very slowly that is) and collected in the honey pail beneath it. I must admit that we all took a little sample of the honey at this point (just to make sure it was good, of course). And it was absolutely fabulous. The biggest surprise was the subtle but very distinct taste OF LAVENDER! Yes! Lavender! The bees obviously were hard at work in the lavender fields and brought this back in the pollen they used to make the honey. It was truly a wonderful taste that I did not expect and was quite grateful for the experience.

Most of this work was done indoors, as with hives nearby, the process tends to attract the bees to reclaim the fruit of their labor. However, at the end, we brought the extractor outside and let the heat of the sun warm up the barrel. This helped get more of the honey stuck to the sides to flow faster.

Then we poured the pure honey from the honey pail into 1/2 pint
mason jars ready for the table! This year, I will share the bounty with our Co-op subscribers.

Given the limited quantity, it will have to be on a first come, first served basis. The price will be $8.50. If you are interested, you can contact the Co-op coordinator at http://www.carmelvalleycoop.org/, or you can visit Carmel Lavender Contacts by clicking here.

With all of the trouble that I have had this year with the bees, this experience was a reminder of the rewards of success. It has given me new resolve to try to work through the problems I have had and restart the colonies next year. This week I have checked the progress of the re queening I wrote about earlier. Unfortunately the re queening seems to have failed and the colony is dead. But the hive next door still lives and from the remaining I will get things going again next spring. Despite the trouble, it is a fantastic experience working with these amazing little creatures.