The Bees

I spent the day with the Bee Keeper (aka Dad) and my Grandma.

It's bee robbing time.

They are not happy about this.

My job was very small. I had to do what Grandma called skiving (not sure I'm spelling it right). With a heated knife you gently cut off the outside wax to get to the honey. It's alot harder than it sounds, and looks.

then the honeycombs are placed into a retractor and you spin and spin and spin it (by hand). After that its smooth sailing with jarring the honey.

this little nifty contraption I really liked. The combs sat in these buckets between times after I skived until my brother retracted and all the leftover honey that fell there and where I was skiving was placed in this collander and drip, drip, drip until it separated from the wax. All leftovers were given back to the bees.

We ended up with well over a gallon of honey and now I have to figure out what I'm going to do with it all.