More Honey!

Frames formerly full of 25 lbs of honey.  After extracting,
I leave them in front of the hive for the bees to get back a little of what I've stollen from them.
Plus the sticky mess is all gone!

I've now harvested and extracted honey three times.  And I'm planning on harvesting more in about a week when the kids return from Costa Rica.  I didn't expect to be getting this much honey out of my two hives.  So far its been about 30 lbs the first extraction, 40 the second, and 25 the third.  That's a total of almost 100 lbs of honey!

In order to make that much honey, my bees

visited about two hundred million flowers!

and flew a collective 5 million miles!

wow.

Unfortunately, the honey frames attract wasps as well.
I'm constantly having to shoo them away when I'm pouring honey outside.
Once, one drowned itself by falling into the jar.  One less wasp to worry about.

After all the giving away and selling I still about 22lbs left (see the upper right of the blog for how much honey I currently have).  Let me know if you want any.

I've thoroughly enjoyed giving away and selling the honey I've harvested.  It's allowed me to share one of the things I'm really enjoying doing in The Garden. In a way, I've made The Garden my classroom, and all my visitors are my students.  It reminds me that I enjoy teaching, especially when there is no expectations or students to worry about after I've gone to bed!  

And I've seen old friends whom I hadn't seen for years, I've met many wonderful neighbors, some of whom I've arranged trades for their own craft hobby. I've already gotten a bottle of mead and some jam from Curt (thank you) and will hopefully get some bacon from Eric and Lopa in exchange for their next order of honey.  Home smoked bacon, can't wait!  I've gotten lemons from three different neighbors that we used to make honey lemonade for Lena's bat mitzvah party.  Delicious, I was told.  Bummer for me, it was all gone by the time I was ready to try any.  Plus, I've been able to recoup some of the costs of this very expensive hobby.

If you ever want honey, or just want to stop by to check out the hives, please, do let me know!

Stay Sweet!