Our first honey harvest

Out of our two beehives, one of them is doing so well that they made enough honey for us to actually harvest some! Anthony wasn't sure if we would have to wait until spring so it was exciting to be able to get honey only a few months after starting with the bees. They had 10 frames full of honey so we decided to take 5 of them. In the future once they have stockpiled more honey we will be able to take entire boxes full!

Here we are getting them out. It was hard to get the bees off of the honey, we had to keep brushing them off. They would fly around the other side, then we would brush them off there and do it over and over again.

Once we got the frames inside the house, the real fun began! Anthony researched how to make your own honey extractor (a machine that spins the honey out of the frames and leaves the honeycomb intact to give back to the bees) with some spare parts and a drill but it did not go as planned. :) The honey was too heavy and started falling of the frames. So we ended up just grabbing pieces of honey comb and squeezing honey out of it into a bucket. It was sticky and messy work!

The white on the honeycomb is wax coating that the bees put on the cells to hold the honey in and protect it from the elements. We used a heat gun to melt the wax and let the honey out. It was fun to watch!

Squishing some honey!

We ended up with a bucket full of honey, honeycomb, and random bee stuff, so we needed to strain and filter the honey before we could bottle it.

So we switched buckets and opened up the valve on the first bucket so that it could pour into a bucket with a filter bag on it. It was so fun to watch it pour out!

Once the honey was filtered, we put it all into jars and I took all the left over honeycomb. I put it all into a bowl and boiled it down slowly so that I could get the beeswax. 

After it boils down completely you pour it into a container and wait for it to harden. Once it hardens you end up with a layer of beeswax on the top and random yucky stuff on the bottom.

So you cut off the beeswax and you are ready to use it! I'm still not sure what I want to do with it, maybe make some candles or lip balm on day. So fun!

We ended up with 35 pounds of honey! Not bad for just 5 frames!