Harvesting Honey

We harvested honey!!!  I had been looking forward to this all year, and now I can't wait to do it again!  The Lord really blessed our bee-keeping efforts this year and we got around 175 pounds of honey.  That makes for about 180 bears (plus the honey that we saved for ourselves in buckets).  Considering all but one of my hives were new this year, that was very good.  As you may remember, last year we did a crush and strain method.  This year we did the whole extraction process.  It went very well.  From start to finish, the whole process (from getting the supers out of the apiary to extracting and bottling) took about 12 hours.  We also took notes and learned several things that we will do differently next year. :)  The flavor this year is a lot different as well.  All of the fruit blossoms this year really changed the flavor of the honey.  We liked last year's honey, but this year's is our favorite so far!  Enjoy the pictures!

Daddy and I did the whole process together.

We tried to leave as many bees behind as we could.  

We harvested our honey in a commercial kitchen.  Thankfully, we did a pretty good job at not bringing bees with us.  The few bees that remained were easy to catch.

Daddy turning the extractor.

A look inside. (You can see the honey and wax that was spun out).

Bottling

Uncapping the frames.  At first, we were using an uncapping knife.  We soon found that dinner forks worked better!

Honey bears.  Such a rewarding sight after a year of work in the apiary!!!

Straining the honey (to get any remaining wax out).  We stirred it to help it go through the filter.

Me with my honey bears.