Well, it is that time of year again and Mark has been trying to carve out a day on his calendar to rob the hives before we hit the road again. Today was that day. And if the harvest last year was poor, the harvest this year was rich, real rich in fact. He took about 13 frames out of the 3 hives (leaving almost that many there) and into my kitchen. Now let me interrupt by saying, I really enjoy supporting my husband in his interests and helping where I need to, but today was quite the experience. Mark had told me that our master beekeeper didn't want to extract small amounts of frames and that we needed to do it by hand. So how do you extract honey by hand? First you put on a pair of nylon gloves (the non-powdered kind) and you get several pairs of knee highs (absolutely clean ones, like new from Wal-mart) and you begin chunking up the bits of honeycomb and putting them in the knee highs and then squeezing the honey out. This leaves a chunk of beeswax in the knee high that you dump into a bowl (this will be boiled out later to separate the beeswax from the impurities) and start the process all over again. For almost 6 hours I stood squeezing honey, in fact 3 of us stood for 6 hours squeezing honey filled kneehighs --and when you squeeze honey, well, somehow, everything gets covered in honey...everything. The kitchen floor was mopped 4 TIMES after this adventure. There is honey on phones, appliance handles, chairs, even my purse (which was in the hallway). I feel sticky just walking into the kitchen. Last year, we barely got a quart and a half of honey. This year I have almost 7 gallons of honey on my kitchen table. Every bowl and pan I owned had honey in it at some point today. And is it good!! mmmmm good. But it just might rank in my top 5 grueling experiences of obtaining something. So I told Mark how supportive I was of him and this little hobby and even willing to add to it, but this was the last time I was doing this to my kitchen. Whether it comes as a birthday, anniversary, Christmas or combination gift, I was buying him an extractor this year.
What tops the cake? We just got an email from our master beekeeper congratulating us on our harvest with this line in it..." You are welcome to bring any number of frames to our place and use the extracting unit. I have a special set-up for small amounts, so it is no bother at all to run small crops through the unit. It would take about 30 minutes to extract and strain the number of frames you had...and the kitchen floor would not be sticky. " I think I'll just go to bed now and see if I can keep from sticking to the sheets.
On another note, we got new photos the other day, but I just haven't had a chance to post them. Here's two of them...
FREEMAN: GALATIANS 5:1 It was for freedom that Christ has set us free. Let us not be entangled again to the yoke of bondage.
JOYCE: PSALM 32:11 Be glad in the Lord and Rejoice.
