Busy Bee Time!!  Harvest Weekend!


Our girls have been very busy visiting all the blooming trees in the neighborhood.  This weekend George, the beeman, aka George, our sweet son-in-law will be pulling the full frames in the hives and bringing them home to extract the honey.  Luke is bee-man in training!  He will be helping his dad, especially with all the heavy lifting.  Those honey frames are HEAVY when full.  I'll have to remember to weigh one this time.

 This video is showing George removing one of the swarms from our bee hive a couple of years ago.  It was one of the biggest swarms yet and this was only half of it.  The other half flew off somewhere.

 George has bees living all over our area, they pollinate flowers and fruit trees and their honey has health benefits like helping counteract the affects of hayfever.  You need local honey from your area for that.

Meanwhile, Cathy and I are slicing off the ends of all the cells the bees have stored the honey in on the frames.  We use electric knives which heats up the knife and melts the wax more than cutting it as we slice off the cell tops in the frames.  We do this over a large container which catches the wax cell tops and the honey that starts to flow out of the cells.  The frames are then moved to the extractor.  6 frames at a time are spun in the extractor and they are spun one direction for one side of the frame and turned to the other side for a spin.  There are honey cells on both sides of each frame.  Some bees from the hives nearest smell the honey and figure easy pickings!

The honey is taken from the extractor and bottled to be sold.  If you are in the San Francisco Bay Area you can find current locations where George's honey is sold on his website: http://georgeshoney.webs.com/