Sunday 31 January 2016

Honey

As I mentioned that hubby was off playing with his bees, or building new wax frames given the weather I thought you might be interested in our first honey harvest.
The frames of honey out of the hives.


Removing the wax caps off both sides of the frame to release the honey

The honey spinner. You put two frames into the holders inside, put the lid on and then crank the handle to sin all the honey out. Hubby upgraded my die cutting machine to a cut n boss and I think he might upgrade to a powered spinner next year!

Draining the honey out of the spinner and through two sieves to strain out any wax or other impurities.


Filling the sterilised jars with the filtered honey.


Our very first jar of honey! We only took about 15% of the honey out of the hives if that as we wanted to keep the bees going over the winter without having to feed them as they were new hives and we ended up with 23 jars of honey. Heaven knows how much we will end up with next year! We've given most of the honey away to friends and family. It's a very delicate flavour compared to commercial honey.
Hubby of course has the full gear to deal with the bees but doesn't always wear it. Guess which hand got stung?! Just be thankful I didn't show you the sting on his nose!

3 comments:

  1. Thanks for showing your photos Cara. It's really fascinating. I've never seen the whole process like that before. That must take a lot of cranking. I'm sure he'd be as pleased with a power spinner as you are with your new machine.

    That's an awful lot of honey. I hear eating local honey can help with allergies. You poor hubby's hand does look sore and was very swollen. Aren't men funny like that. Not wearing the protective clothing they should. My hubby told me off last year for telling a man who was doing some work for us he should be wearing a mask. He was cutting paving slabs and working in a cloud of dust. oh well!

    I was interested to read that you only took a small percentage of the honey so the bees didn't have to be fed.

    Really interesting post Cara. Thanks for sharing. Barbxx

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  2. Oh wow what wonderful pictures and tutorial of how you are extracting the honey. That is how I look when I get stung also.

    Hugs Diane

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  3. Oh wow what wonderful pictures and tutorial of how you are extracting the honey. That is how I look when I get stung also.

    Hugs Diane

    ReplyDelete

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