Update on our Bees

So! We got our honey bees in the summer and have not done a whole lot with them since then. They are at a friend's house because he has pretty much the perfect yard for them. Tony has gone to check on them once in awhile but other than that he is just hoping they will swarm because the hive we have is pretty crowded. So far they have not swarmed.

A couple week ago Tony went over and our friend helped him get a few bars of honeycomb out. The rest we had to leave in the hive for the bees to live off of during the winter. We can get the honey out in the spring, I'm looking forward to that!

He filled up one of his big tupperware containers with honeycomb that he cut off the bars. 

The leftover bars that will be put back in the hive after they are cleaned up better

Tony took the honeycomb and crushed it up in these ziplock bags

Then he put together this setup

The honey could drip through the cheesecloth and separate from the wax

The process took awhile. We let it go overnight and then all the next day on Sunday. Maybe a little finishing up on Monday...

Exciting to see so much honey in the jar

Ta-Da!

After filling up the big jars we had some extra to put into smaller jars. We checked at a lot of stores but ended up finding these cute jars in the wedding aisle of Michaels!

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In the crockpot Tony poured in what was left after we got as much honey we could in to the jars. The wax separated from the rest of the honey and we ended up with this nice slab of wax that we can use for lipbalm , candles or something fun like that. Tony found some owl molds... !! :)

Aren't they cute! 

We have given 3 away so far, I wish we had more samples to share.

In any case, exciting to have some really great tasting honey and kudos to Tony for doing a majority of the work. Looking forward to getting more honey next year.