Borrowed a bit more Honey from the girls!

Angie and I inspected the hives again on Friday, July 22nd.  Despite the unbearably hot weather, the girls are hard at work doing what they do..............raising brood and making honey!  Hive #1, which was started from a 3 lb. package of bees in April, is thriving.  They are working on their second medium honey super, drawing comb nicely, and starting to fill the cells with honey.  That being said...........we checked the first honey super, and decided that since they have it filled with capped honey, we could safely take another frame of honey and extract it. 

Angie holds a frame of capped honey.  This frame will yield just over a quart of honey.

This photo shows a medium frame in the process of having the wax comb drawn out by the bees.  Once the comb is drawn, they will fill each cell with honey.  Once they have the moisture content of the honey to the proper level, they will cap the cells with wax. 

That's the latest on the Honey Bees.  Hive #2 continues to grow, now that the queen is productive and laying eggs.  Next update will focus on Hive #2 and how things are progressing.  Despite the hot weather...............the Honey Bees are working hard!

Our first Honey Harvest!!!

Angie and I are SO excited!  Our package bee hive has been filling and capping frames of Honey for a couple of weeks now.  They are doing so well, we felt it was safe to "borrow" a frame of honey for ourselves.  This morning, we removed a frame of capped honey, and scraped the honey and wax into a crock pot.  We set the heat to low, and allowed the wax to melt and separate from the honey and float to the top.  We turned off the heat, let it cool, and simply removed the cake of wax from the top of the honey.  All that was left to do was pour the fresh honey into jars, and we were done!

This single frame of honey yielded just over 2 pints jars.  Yes, it is YUMMY!

Below is a shot of the wax and honey in the crock pot, before heating to separate.

Here is the finished product:  Just over 2 pint jars of nature's finest......fresh Honey!

Our Honey Bees have been nothing short of amazing since we hived them this past April.  My only regret is that we should have started Beekeeping 25 years ago!  This is SOOO fun!