Bee Spit In A Jar, Finally!

[jdmidwest]

Its been a long road the last 2 years and about $5,000.00 out of pocket. Millions of flights from a flower to the hive in a bee's honey stomach. Spit out in a cell after mixing with enzymes in the bee's stomach. When filled, it is fanned to where it reaches its lowest moisture content by other bees. Finally the cells are capped with flakes of wax off the bees butts. Yummy.

I had 2 supers of surplus honey for me this year, did not seem like much. But it extracted out enough for the family consumption till next year and some for friends.

I pulled the frames last weekend, some from the farm and the other from the house. I then scraped the cappings off and run them thru my new homemade extractor. Filtered it as run from the extracting buckets into the bottling bucket. Let it sit a while for bubbles to rise to top, then bottled it into pint masonary jars. I rinsed the wax capping from the filter and will melt them to make me a couple of nice beeswax candles.

Honey and biscuits for breakfast this morning.

[Ham]

^{Enjoy your breakfast. You certainly earned it.}

[Quillback]

Honey and biscuits, man that is good stuff!

[tho1mas]

Check into selling the wax. My dad had over 50 hives & made more money selling wax than honey. He made a wax melter from black painted glass (solar). Just a thought if you keep adding to your colonies.

[BilletHead]

Sweet success JD,

BilletHead

[Gavin]

Good for you JD. You have been working those for a couple years, glad you finally got your reward!

[jdmidwest]

I was finally able to get some people off my back that kept asking when they were going to get honey. Looks like each frame will average a quart of honey. Next year I will have 10 hives making honey with 8 frames in a super and 2 supers to a hive equals around 40 gallons of honey possible next year.

As far as the wax goes, that surplus does not come until you decap the frames of honey or melt out old wax frames. Last I checked it was going for about $8 a pound.

Once I reach a goal of 25 hives, I will start raising and selling queens or nucs of bees. Queens sell for $25 and nucs are bringing $150 this year. Just another way to recup a little of the investment.

[Terrierman]

I used to mess around with bees, had six hives. It's fun but a lot of work.

[jdmidwest]

It can be at times, but it is something to kill the afternoons after the real job. I am using 8 frame hives instead of 10 because of the weight. I almost went to all mediums but was not convinced that it was easier and there are more boxes and frames to make.