Honey Harvest

For Family Home Evening this week we learned how to harvest honey from our beehives. We don't actually own the bees (I"m WAY too frightened of them to make that an option). They belong to a friend who needed a spot of property to keep them. This was a wild colony (which in these parts of the country means they were Africanized or 'Killer' Bees. Fun, right?) that was caught and put into a hive with a domestic queen. These little bees liked to have plenty of personal space around their hive (get close and they'd attack you), so our pasture was a good place for them to live while the queen worked on raising calmer, domesticated brood.

We've had them on our property for over a year, and now it's harvest time. Our friend collected the frames full of honey and invited us over to help harvest it. What a fun night this was. First we were treated to a fascinating presentation about bees, where we learned all about hive behavior and bee anatomy. Then we got busy.

The boys helped steady the heavy frames of honey while Jared sliced off the wax caps with a heated electric knife.

Then he loaded the frames into a huge centrifuge and let the children take turns spinning the handle to extract the honey. (This brought back memories of visiting my Grandpa Tucker's honey house in Wyoming, where his tools for processing honey were all carefully stashed and collecting dust after decades of sitting idle. My Grandpa had died long before I was born, but his honey tools were still there.)

They were fascinated to watch the honey whip out of the honeycomb. We successfully learned the trick to doing this fast enough to extract the honey but gently enough to prevent the honeycomb from breaking away. Everyone took a turn spinning the handle and we were mesmerized watching the honey slide out of the honeycomb.

After a bit of work, we were able to pour the honey through the filter and collect it in a honey jar. Boy-howdy is this stuff delicious! Raw honey, fresh from the fields, made from Texas wildflowers.

It was such a memorable Family Home Evening and we really enjoyed learning together. Jared was a great teacher and we loved visiting his farm.