HONEY

After having Bees for 2 years and losing my first hive last winter...this hive came through this year and we got about 40 lbs of honey!! This came as a shock to us because when we would check on them they hadn't made much progress in the super or other boxes we thought they should.  When dad and Matt came over and took the hive apart thats when they saw all the honey toward the bottom.  We were so excited, but so overwhelmed.  lol.  Since they didn't build out the super we had to harvest the honey by hand.  Luckily I  had my mom and dad to help.  It took my mom  and I about 6 hours from start to finish.  It really is a process and many times while we were working we would look at each other and say we felt like we were back in the pioneer days.  So FIRST: we were lucky enough to cheat a little with a honey spinner.  So you get a plank that has honey and you run a fork over it on both sides to get off the top layer and open up the honey.  Then you put to planks in the honey spinner and spin them for about 7/8 minutes then go in a turn them over for the other side and spin another 7/8 minutes.  We had to do that with all my planks.  Afterwards we emptied some honey out of the spinner and took it inside to sift it or strain it to get out every last granuaile.  So it went through 2 different sifters.  After it went through the sifter it was time to pour it into our jars.  we only could do so much at a time since we only had the one sifter that it took awhile to get it all through.  We would then fill up our bowl again and do the process all over.  It was so fun and my mom and I  ended up having a blast figuring it all out.  Hopefully my bees make it through the winter this year and we can start again in the spring.