For those of you that don't know, Barry is now a beekeeper. He got his first colony of honey bees last year, and he is absolutely enamored with the whole endeavor. Through trial and error, and hours of reading about the ins and outs of honey bees, he learned a lot last year, and expanded to two colonies this year. We harvested the honey the end of August. I've given him a pretty hard time about the "bee experiement" but I must admit that harvesting the honey turned out to be really interesting. For about an hour, that is. Then it got pretty boring, and really sticky. For those of you not familiar with honey harvesting (and I'm assuming that's all of you) here is how it works. We bought a honey extractor, into which you put three frames of honey. You then turn a crank and it spins the frames around fast enough to pull out all of the honey. The honey accumulates in the drum and slowly drips through the spout at the bottom. Barry double strained it, then poured it into quart jars. It was really pretty golden honey, much lighter than last year. From what I've gathered, the color and taste of the honey is dependent on the types of plants the bees pollinate, so it varies from year to year, even in the same location. We got about eighteen quarts of honey, so that is one item we can check off our food storage list!
The next progression in this set of shots is missing, since I had to drop the camera and go de-honey Landon. He put the frame of honey on his head. Maybe a buzz cut wouldn't be such a bad idea--lately he sticks everything in his hair--jam, pizza, you name it. 
6 comments:
Haha Landon is so great. Way to go Barry and congrats on a successful bee harvest!
Can you put Landon in the extractor and spin all the honey off?? I wish we would have been more on the ball with our bees-- I think I will settle for buying it from you guys some day if you ever sell it!! It was yummy!
Holy cow, you're quite the litle blogger. Good work! It was so fun to read about your cute little family. I'm glad we happened into your honey harvest because it really was cool and by far the coolest thing happening in the neighborhood that afternoon. (The competition is pretty stiff!) Thanks for letting us watch!
What a cute little family you have! Don't ask me how I happened on your blog...I was just clicking links on friends blogs, and kept clicking on names that I knew, and ended up here...small world, huh?
My dad used to have bees on his property out by blackrock. We're still enjoying our lifetime supply from that :o)
Felicia
Oh, and I don't think you can get to our family blog from my profile...it's hidden, but if you want to check it out it's gravesfamilymeanderings.blogspot.com.
Wow, that is really interesting about the honeybees! Are you going to see "The Secret Life of Bees"? I loved that book! Looks like you all had fun harvesting the honey minus the stickiness :)
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