Honey Harvesting

So you may or may not know that Tony & I have 2 hives of bees. One is a top bar hive that we have had for a few year and the other one is white square box hive that we were borrowing from the person we keep our bees in his yard at and we caught that swarm in the summer at the Hale Center Theater in West Valley. Tony decided to get rid of the bees and harvest the honey because we will most likely be moving next year and he didn’t want to deal with the bees on top of moving. He found a husband and wife who wanted the bees and made the transfer and started bringing the honey home to process. I don’t have pictures of everything but here are a few I took.

Tony got 2 bags , I guess they were made out of cheesecloth? I am not really sure. And put all the honeycomb inside and crushed it down. One bag per white bucket that he had collected honeycomb in.

 

 He had a hole drilled in a big metal container and set something inside the bucket so the bag of honeycomb wasnt just resting on the bottom in a sticky mess. The honey started flowing out at a pretty good rate I guess. We switched out pint jars every 20-30 minutes that night.

Honey with honeycomb in it seem to be rare, somewhat popular and can be sold for a slightly higher price than honey with no comb in it. He sold a few jars on KSL already and my mom bought a couple and one of my coworkers. It was not as sticky as a process as I thought it would be but we did mop the floors and counters a few times. I am a little relieved we are taking a break from the bees but it will be weird not to have any hives to check on. We dont have to worry about the bees in the winter at least.  

Tony got stung about 6 times on Monday when he was getting the honeycomb, stung by bees that didnt get picked up by the couple earlier in the day. His ankle, nose, cheese and lips got pretty puffy and we almost went to urgent care but thanks to our friend for giving him some Benadryl, he recovered okay without having to go to the doctor. Phew! 

Do you have any fun hobbies that are a little different than the norm?