A few weeks ago, we had a really nice long weekend with Tres's pop, sister, and her husband. We got some quality time together, enjoyed lots of good food and beer, and they gave us a ton of help around the house/yard and with the kiddos.
One of the projects they took on while they were here was harvesting one of our beehives. The bees didn't survive the winter - I'm not sure if it was disease, pests, an excess of moisture, or some combination - so we harvested all of the honey from their hive. It wasn't full, about half of the combs only had a few inches of honey at the top, and we got about 2.5 gallons of honey from it. I intend to clean/melt the beeswax too, but haven't gotten to a second attempt, after my first failed. I'll post more about it after I try again. The other hive seems to be doing quite well and we may attempt to split it later this spring.
Our stash, in the (poorly lit) pantry
To remove the honey, they cut the combs off of the bars (I didn't get photos of this part, but here's what the hives and bars look like), crunched them up, and put them in a paint strainer inside a fifty gallon food grade bucket with a spigot on the bottom, lined with another paint strainer. The honey slowly strained through the cloth and they poured it into pint jars. It was pretty slow going, taking about 12 hours (15 hours?) over the course of two days. As it slowed, it didn't need such constant surveillance, just occasional checks and jar replacement. This was a totally manageable technique for processing what was, for us, a large amount of honey. Assuming (hoping!) we don't lose a hive again, we won't need to do things on such a large scale in the future, but we would employ a similar technique (crushing, straining, jarring) with different equipment. I'm really happy with how it worked out and so grateful to our family for making it possible during an otherwise busy (crazy?) time for us. It was a wonderful family weekend. Oh, and we've been eating honey every day since. It's delicious.
Important lessons from Uncle Steve
Headed to the Yakima with Auntie Jessie (and Booker)
Our supervisor and official taste tester hard at work
The fam-damily (sans photographer Grandpa)
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