In Our Lovely Deseret

This summer while the chickens snuck into the garden,



and Rainbow Girl and I milked Betty the Goat,



on the milk stand built by The Mister of the House,

where if you kept a watchful eye you would catch frequent summer accidents averted by toddlers-with-initiative;


and even wobbly-headed newborns became bright-eyed infants before your very eyes (although you're not quite sure how),



...well while all of this happened at The Olsen's over this summer, the flowers bloomed and dangled pollen like candy-bait for kids.



Except pollen isn't bait for kids, just bees. And boy did they work!

Out of two hives we set up this spring, we harvested just ONE this week. The other hive swarmed, and we lost the majority of that hive (plus their delicious honey). But how could we be too sad when we pulled in this harvest?

Have a looksie!



We borrowed this honey extractor from a like-minded neighbor. What a blessing to have like-minded neighbors! The Mister of the House donned his special bee jacket, smoked the bees a bit so they would be nice, and pulled out 7 panels of honeycomb.

After shaving the tips off the combs, we placed the panels into this extractor and cranked the heck out of it!



I pulled some nylons off from my fungus-ridden feet and put them over the valve at the bottom of the extractor.



Those were clean, Gomer. What're you thinking?! But see all the waxy crappy that comes out with it? We used clean new stockings to serve as a filter.

We didn't have the specialty bee cutting knife, so for a second we worried that our cuts were so sloppy we would be wasting too much honey. So we set up more filtering over bowls, just to be prudent.

From 2011.FARM PICS

I think people used to chew this wax back in the olden days, which was probably a healthy alternative to chewing tobacco. Look how much there is! In the future we may try to make some candles or chapstick or something, but for now, it was enough of a sticky mess just to process the honey.

We had TWO pitchers that we hoped we could fill with the honey. Here's us happily filling our second pitcher. The progression of the slow but steady fill went like this:



so in the end we filled THREE pitchers full of honey, plus some here and there in extra bowls. All in all, we pulled out about 30 POUNDS of honey! Isn't it absolutely GORGEOUS?



The next morning we put out the sticky spent panels by the hives, and the bees went to work pulling in the wax and leftover gooey. What good little bees.



I totally facebook-bragged about this haul and heard all sorts of ego-inflating comments. In reality, this is truly the work of The Mister of the House. He is an AMAZING farmer guy. I am his biggest cheerleader! Love you dude.