Despite my best efforts and hard work, I managed to produce some honey my first year. Apparently sometime between they trying to leave, being captured, and succeeding in leaving and my various bumbling attempts to help them be happy, they managed to get out some and collect some nectar.
This past weekend, I was happy to collect ten frames of honey. Not a lot for any serious bee keeper, but let's face it. I am hardly serious. I was perfectly content with my sixteen pints of golden goodness! My wife was less thrilled for reasons that will become obvious, but can be summed up in her question "why are all of the doorknobs in the house sticky?"
I don't know much about processing honey, that I will readily admit. I knew from some conversations with some real beekeepers at the class I attended that since I was making "chunk" or "cut comb" honey, I could get by without investing five hundred dollars in a fancy shmancy centrifugal honey extraction machine which looks like an ice cream maker on growth hormones. The problem with cut comb honey though is that the honey is all inside the wax cells. That means that when you cut some and put it in a jar, it looks kind of naked just sitting there with no honey to keep it company. Some more honey is needed to fill in the jar around the honey comb, and that is where honey extraction comes in. Since I didn't have the equipment and was making up as I went anyway, this turned out to be an adventure.
The first job was to persuade the bees that they should give me the honey that they had been working so hard on storing up. I tried reasoning with them using the politician's approach. They had so much honey, and I had none. It wasn't fair to me that they had excess and I had none. They should be happy to donate a portion of their money...er...honey to me so that we could all enjoy it equally. The bees explained to me in a very buzzy and menacing way that I didn't have any honey because I didn't gather nectar or bother making any, but having kept up with the news lately, I was ready for this argument. I told them that I couldn't gather nectar or make honey because I was already working full time just to pay the rent and buy food. I asked if they had any idea how much medical insurance costs these days. I explained that I was disadvantaged because they were born into royalty (their mother was a queen) and therefore had a huge money...I mean honey advantage that I didn't have. Therefore, it was only fair that they should share the fruits of that advantage with me, a poor, uneducated person without pollen sacks on my legs or a little sippy straw on my mouth that would let me get nectar from flowers.
Like most elitist, wealthy, greedy mobs they immediately ganged up an me and attempted to cheat me out of what was rightfully mine through violence. I gave up reasoning and, still taking cues from politicians, took it by force. After all, if they were too selfish to see that I needed honey too, what else could be done but resort to legal force?
After collecting ten frames of tax honey, I happily went back to the house to see if I could figure out how to get it out of those cells that they had so faithfully worked to get it into.
Conscious of my wife's natural aversion to things that stick, I decided the best thing to do right from the start was cover the kitchen table with plastic sheeting. That way, all I had to do to clean up was carefully remove it and throw it away...just like when I painted the living room with the furniture in it. Bad example...really bad example.
Once everything was covered with plastic, I retrieved the new plastic pail that I had reserved just for this task. The very knowledgeable and wise man at the beekeeping class had explained to me that all I had to do was cut the cappings (the thin white wax covering on the cells) and lean the comb inside the frame over in the bucket and in an hour or so, most of the honey would run out. I could then use that honey to pack sections of comb with. Simple enough. I started by uncapping a frame of honey and setting it in the bucket as advised. I somehow managed to drip a little honey in my lap doing that and some (unbeknown to me) somehow managed to drip onto the floor. Our floors are honey colored anyway, so naturally I didn't notice. After an hour of being very bored (ever watch paint dry? This is more boring), I checked the bucket and found about half a cup of honey in it. That would be good news except the frame holds about a pint and a half. I quickly realized that this wasn't going to get me anywhere and an alternate plan was needed, and quickly. You see, the whole time I was waiting for the honey to drain I was nibbling on honey and comb. I was in serious danger of eating it all before I could get it in the jars! If the first frame took hours to drain, I was going to be there for days draining all ten! Apparently the "expert" who had offered the advise was a fake..or maybe I wasn't listening because I was watching the swarm of several thousand angry bees trying to figure out why we just tore their hive apart.
I went to the store and bought two stainless steel stock pots. I brought them home and drilled holes in the bottom of one and then washed them both. I made a screen filter (don't worry, it was new screen) to go between them. I then crushed the honey comb, releasing the honey but mixing the wax all in with it. I then placed the glob of wax and honey in the top pot (the one with holes in it) and let it drain through the screen into the bottom pot. After five minutes the top pot was empty and the bottom one had mostly honey in it. I was onto something! I decided that a second stage of filtering was needed, so I ran it back through the filter pot, this time with cheese cloth instead of screen in it. The results were beautiful! The bottom pot had pure, golden, very sticky honey in it and the wax was all in the screen and top pot! Which brings up the that sticky subject again. Somehow while transferring honey and wax between pots, I managed to get more than little bit all over the table, which was now fairly awash in honey. No big deal though...I had the plastic on it.
About this time my wife returned from work to find her kitchen covered in bee boxes, jars, wax, and copious amounts of honey coating it all. She (wisely) chose not to look too closely and expressed her confidence that I would clean it all up ("AND I MEAN ALL OF IT!") when I was done. I noticed that the honey had taken on a life of its own and was now slowly, slowly creeping towards the edge of the table. I needed to hurry up!
So...one frame down, ten to go! And I was only three hours into it. I really needed to hurry up! Once I finished the "trial run" with the first frame, I set up a more efficient "production line" for separating the honey from the comb. Of course, this meant handling much larger quantities of honey..quarts at a time instead of pints. This naturally led to some unforseen problems such as the filter becoming clogged and overflowing down the side of the catch pot and onto..you guessed it, the table. At this point I was building little levees with leftover bees wax to keep the loose honey at bay, but they were in danger of being breeched. OK, so they were breached a few times which led to a slow motion disaster as honey ran over the edge of the table and pooled onto my shoes.
I guess I must have let the smell of fresh honey get out of the house. Before I could finish my last batch of honey, I heard a knock at the door. I went to see who it was (hey, I just realized why the doorknob was sticky!) and it was an acquaintance whom had not visited in over a year. "Is that honey?" he asked as soon as he came in. I offered him a jar. Before he could leave, I heard a woman's voice. In came my mother-in-law whom I had also not seen in almost a year. "Oh, is that honey?", she asked, eying the jar that the previous thief was taking out the door. I gave her a jar. "Don't you think you should let me take your grandmother some?" she asked, "I am on my way over there." My wife called and asked if she wanted a jar, and she did. "You know, your uncle is visiting. Better bring him some too!". Did I mention that my mother had come to watch the show of me extracting the honey? Of course I couldn't not give her a jar before she left. My honey was leaving faster than I could get it into jars!
"Don't forget your daughter wants some too", my wife reminded me, "I think you should give her two because she is moving away and it will have to last her until she comes home to visit." Yea. True. I then realized that I had promised a jar to my nieces and nephew who felt they deserved it because they had kept such a vigilant watch over my bees when they came to visit their flower gardens and drink the swimming pool water. I set aside a jar for them. "Don't forget your other sister." my mother helpfully offered, " you can mail it to her."
This was crazy! I had worked all this time to collect the honey from the hives, extract it, put it in jars, and would be cleaning sticky and bees wax off everything we owned (I found some on the lawn mower...not sure how that happened), and these ungrateful people were carting it off before I could even have time to admire it! What right did they have asking for my honey anyway? I started out with sixteen pints and was already down to half of that, and they hadn't been jarred for a day yet! At this rate, it would be completely gone by week's end! I had wanted it to last all winter! Sure, I still had enough, but I had wanted to have extra just in case. I started to get irritated, not at anyone in particular, but just that my honey was being carted right out of my house faster than I could....then a thought hit me. "Whose honey? Who made it?"
Suddenly I felt silly and humble. I hadn't made that honey, I had taken it from the bees. Did I worry about the work that they had put into it? Heck no...yet here I was getting upset about "my" stash dwindling before my eyes because why? Other people wanted to enjoy it too? And they hadn't stolen it, they had either asked or had it offered. Some even offered to pay me for it, although I refused
In the end, I realized that although I did manage the bees (sort-of), they did all of the real work that produced that honey and I should be glad to have the six or eight pints that I have left for myself. In a moment of pride and selfishness, I had forgotten that the whole reason I got into beekeeping was to have something I enjoyed doing, not to stockpile liquid gold. I realized that I was happy that my friends and family wanted to participate in my hobby and that something as simple as a jar of honey could bring them such pleasure. I quickly made peace with the situation and am now happy to share my bounty with others. Don't get me wrong...the lesson I learned wasn't a "Progressive" one. I still don't think any of those people had a RIGHT to the honey, and that is the point. I chose to share my hobby with them and they were happy to accept. Things are as they should be.
Besides, next year I will have four times as much...and let's see those bees keep me from taking it all!
I read this as soon as you sent the link; now I'm finally making it back to comment!
ReplyDeleteYou're a funny guy. :) My favorite line is the "slow motion disaster." I often wish I lived closer, and now is definitely one of those times.
-- Sara.