Last week Lee was cutting a tree that had uprooted and fallen over the barbwire fence. As he did it, honey bees came buzzing out. He was able to see golden honeycomb in the hollowed out tree where the bees were living. Not sure what to do he left it alone and continued to work on another tree. He came home and told me about it. After discussing it, we called the previous owners of the property because they raised honey bees. Nancy(the previous owner) was so excited to hear about the bees! She suggested that we cover the tree with a tarp until the weather is warmer or they might not survive the winter. She wanted to take the bees, but said that she couldn't until March. (I'm not sure why, but she's the bee expert. ) On Monday she went out with Lee to see the bees and bring a tarp to cover them. When they were out there, she removed three honey combs for us to bring home.
We got quite the bee and honey extracting lesson Monday night. Basically when you extract honey without a press, you scrap off the waxy sealant and then turn over the honeycomb and let the honey drip out. If you heat it up the process goes faster. We tried a hair dryer but it was melting the honey comb so that didn't work. (For those bee novice, the entire honeycomb is made of wax). I guess just a small amount of heat is better....
Eventually we just squeezed the comb by hand and ran it through a strainer. The wax rises to the top!!!
We ended up with 2 cups of honey from just a small amount of honeycomb. Pretty neat!!! It was a great learning experience for the kids and us. I had to bribe Peyton and Faith with M&M's to try it. Ian dug right in. He kept saying, bite, bite.....
We are thinking we might give bee raising a whirl...... That's the buzz.....
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