Saturday was "Honey Harvesting Day." It was exciting and a lot of work (for Eric and Tyler, not me). It was a really good harvest with about 220 pounds of honey! For those of you who don't know how honey is harvested, here is the Wenger version:
First, they pulled the frames from the hives and replaced them with empty ones. They used the smoker to calm the bees. It doesn't calm all the bees and they get pretty mad when you try to take their honey so I used my telephoto lens and kept my distance.
Eric used an uncapping knife to uncap the honey cells. The knife is not sharp, but is very hot.
Then the frame is placed in the extractor. This one hold 2 frames at a time and is cranked by hand. The frames spin acting as a centrifuge and honey goes to the bottom of the cylinder.
When the extractor gets hard to crank, the honey is strained into a bucket. The strainer in the bucket gets out the wax chunks and stuff.
It is then poured into jars or bottles for consumption or sale.
The final product!
For those of you interested, the prices are as follows:
6oz. bear - $1.50
12oz. cylinder - $3.00
1 quart glass jar - $12.00
1 comments:
i am looking forward to getting ours!
tyler was so grown up on the phone taking my order. it was sweet.
i bought a jar just like that at the antique store...surely mine is old right? :)
i love the pattern on the glass.
i haven't seen you forever!
sorry you had to go back to work...but they need you over there.
just today i though "meeesus weeenn-er...can you help me with my seees-ers?"
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