Honey Harvest

Every year, our bee-keeping friends get together to "spin" honey and compare notes on how well our hives have done over the year. Every year, someone different hits the jackpot. This year it was my parents; they harvested about 40 lbs. of honey. Not a lot, compared to some years, but more than any of the rest of us got. It was a strange year; we thought with all the warm weather we would be drowning in honey, but that wasn't the case.

Here's how we harvest honey:

First, you have to remove the frames from the hives. This is Kylie and Ross checking his hive. The first frame he pulled out was beautiful, and we thought he had a bumper crop. Unfortuntely, he only had three good frames from this hive. He has two more hives that he hasn't checked yet, though.

Next, using a hot knife, you cut the wax off the frame.

Then you put the frames into the spinner, and crank the handle really fast, hence you are "spinning" honey.
The spinning forces the honey out of the frame and into the spinner. Then you drain it into a bucket with a filter to get out any bits of wax or bee parts that might be mixed in:

Finally, you pour the filtered honey into jars:

and voila, you have jars of beautiful honey! This is ours, about six quarts or 18 lbs.

This year, our honey was much darker than it has been in the past. Maybe due to the great blackberry crop this year?