Our Loss is Your Gain

So, like most of the country, we had a ridiculously cold couple of days. Sadly, our hives didn’t survive. That’s the bad news. The good news is that we now have four five-gallon buckets of honey and wax. So, yay?

Right after the cold snap, we were outside working on something, and I wandered close to the hives. I didn’t hear anything, which is unusual. So I peeked. It didn’t look like there was any activity.

Well, crud.

So we pulled all of the frames. Lots and lots of honey. So they didn’t starve. OK, but still no live bees. Three hives of honey and wax incoming. Usually we’ve done the extraction outside and brought it in, but it was a little chilly, so we taped butcher paper to cover our island.

So. Much. Better. We had a good work table with lots of room for both of us to work. We have a ceiling fan to cool us because we got hot. And it was easy to clean up.

We started with square containers and our two biggest hotel pans.

So I hopped down to the local feed store and came back with four five-gallon buckets. Much better.

We use metal bench knives to scrape off the honey/comb. A bowl of hot water helps. This time, I tried to get some comb honey with moderate success.

The rest was separated into good, best, and comb.

It’s pretty delicious. I’ve been using it in my morning oatmeal instead of sugar. Let me know if you want any. We have comb honey for $2 an ounce (limited supply) regular honey for $8, and comb honey for $5. We will also have beeswax wraps, three for $15. we can also do candles. I’ll add a link to the farm blog.