First honey
 

My medium super was completely filled with capped honey. This made me antsy because it means the bees have no more room to build and increase supplies, and probably increases the chance that they will split with a swarm.

So, because I temporarily don't have another super to add, I decided I would need to harvest. The extractor I was given appears to have a broken gear, plus it's sort of intimidating to try and use it if you have never been shown before how to use it.

So I decided to harvest cut comb, that is the honey and the wax together. This is how honey was often eaten back in the day. But today, most of you have probably never had comb honey. It's like eating honey + gum. The gun is the wax. It's delicious. One reason you don't see honey like this usually is because it takes bees 9 pounds of honey to produce 1 pound of wax. So destroying/removing the wax comb is very inefficient. But it certainly is the way honey has been eaten for millenia. The wax can be saved and made into candles and other products.

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Above are two medium frames of capped honey. The white stuff is wax.


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Here I am starting to cut the wax and honey. I am cutting there because there is a wire embedded in the wax, to prevent the comb from being destroyed while extracting. But here, with cut comb, it is in the way, and making me less efficient in terms of the amount of cuts I have to do.

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Picking up a piece of the comb I cut.


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Pieces of comb in the jar. 1 gallon jar.


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More shots of the comb in the jar. The cells that have been cut through are oozing honey into the bottom of the jar.

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Honey + bits of wax + santoku. We got a cup of honey just from the wax paper.

Looks delicious.

My uncle spent his entire career producing honey. Now his sons and grandsons have taken over the business. Hence, we were always swamped with honey. I love to eat it fresh with the bits of wax. Good stuff.

So now when you want honey you just pull out one of those rectangles and chow down? Or is there another step in the process?

If you want to eat honey straight, yes, you can just pull out honeycomb and eat it, and spit out the wax. If you need just plain honey, you can squeeze the honeycomb in a simple press to extract the honey.

I used two frames. I have eight frames left. I will extract the honey from those from the comb, so that the bees can use the comb again and give me a refill.

Excellent report Mike.

Looks sticky.

Are they poor as dirt? Many bee operations have gone belly-up.

They never made much money at it. I haven't talked to them for a while. I wonder how they are doing.

My inlaws gave us a bucket of honey for Christmas and our food storage. It weighs about 20 pounds. My daughter pulled it off the pantry shelf and it fell on her foot last week. Her foot was very swollen and she could not walk. We took her to the doctor it was just a bad contusion. That is my only experience with honey.

Thi smay be one of the stupidest questions ever, but here goes:

Is honey bee poop?