My First Honey Harvest & A Look Back at My First Year of Beekeeping

It was the end of May when my friend Billie & I installed my first two packages of bees. I remember being nervous about handling that many bees and hoping to just get it all right. Little did I know that it really wasn't that many bees in those boxes and by the end of the season we'd be working with a whole lot more!

I quickly had to learn how to re-queen one of my hives & this hive then became known as my "weak" hive. Man did this hive give me fits. or teach me alot of beekeeping lessons; whichever way you want to look at it.

I was lucky enough to watch another local beekeeper catch a swarm.

And thanks to many leads via friends on facebook (thank you!) Billie & I went on a few attempts to catch wild swarms ourselves. One where we literally got to see it fly away as we unloaded our equiptment. Man was that an amazing site! At one point I even got enough guts to catch a swarm on my own!

Only to have it to fly away the next day. Hopefully they at least found a good home in our timber some where and will be great genetics for my future bees.

Then there were the "log bees". What a cool experience that was! Our bee mentor & amazingly talented friend Bill came with me on this one. We retrieved a beautiful hive of bees from an old log.

These bees are currently in my "weak hive" and are doing great!
Speaking of the amazing "Bee Bill"; as my kids like to call him. Thank you, thank you, thank you, for your willingness to share your knowledge with Billie & I. And for coming over on a whim when one of us is freaking out over a bee situation. Hopefully you don't regret the night we starting asking you questions at the Bee Club meeting. LOL! Seriously though; Thank you!!!

It's been so amazing to watch the bees work and learn so much about their importance in our lives.

Yesterday both Billie & Bill came over to help me do my Fall inspection. My larger hive is in great shape so we felt it would be alright to take a frame of honey to extract. The rest the bees get to keep!

It's so beautiful!

I brought the frame inside and last night before bed began the extracting process.

First, the wax cappings get scrapped off, using a warmed up kitchen knife.

The cappings and the honey are put into a sieve to filter out the wax pieces.

I let all of this rest overnight to slowly drain into the bowl. 

This morning I filtered it one more time and put it into the glass jars. I was able to get just under a quart of honey from one frame. That to me is pretty amazing stuff!

Ella and I put the frame out on the fence line this morning so the bees could finish up the last little bits. 

I'm so happy I made the decision to get into beekeeping and even more thankful to my "bee buddies" Billie & Bill. Hee! Now, let's have a drink to celebrate! 

Oh! And for the record : I only got stung once!