Friday, August 24, 2012

A Lesson in Beekeeping

Scott cutting off the comb wax caps
Scott's dad keeps bees. Pretty cool, right?

On Tuesday, he had an appointment for honey extraction and we all went along to see the process and help.

The process was so fascinating.When bees are making honey comb they will fill the hexagonal container with honey and when its filled, they will cap it off with wax. To extract the honey, all of the wax caps need to be removed. Each of the individual comb frame need to be cut or cleaned so that the honey can flow out of the combs.

Then all of the combs are placed into a cylinder with a motor that will spin them for about a half hour to pull all of the honey out of the combs. The honey will drip down to the bottom and fill containers through a spout.

It took six hours to extract all of the honey! We ended up with 26 gallons worth. Honey for everyone!!

The next day, I donned a bee suit and helped put the bee boxes back in the hives. The bees would clean out any excess honey on the frames and then begin making new combs and filling them with honey.

1 comment:

  1. That is awesome, and very brave of Scott's Dad. I hate bees, but I love honey. I'm glad there are people out there willing to potentially sacrifice their bodies so the rest of us can have some sweet, sweet honey.

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