Today we quickly went about some basic garden maintenance like harvesting vegetables and apples, turning on and checking the irrigation, emptying the dehydrator of peppers, putting compost on the raspberry beds and tidying up the herb circle so that we could start the honey harvesting! Although we only had nine frames of honey to harvest, everyone really enjoyed the experience. Mitchell demonstrated how to use the hot knife to uncap the cells and Megan was in charge of loading the frames into the extractor. After everyone uncapped at least one full frame, the extractor was full and Colin, Megan and Tamara took turns cranking it. We watched as the honey was thrown from the frames onto the inside of the barrel and then slowly dripped down to the bottom. We then opened the "honey gate" at the bottom and let the thick honey flow through a sieve to separate out pieces of wax. Julia and Raina squeezed honey out of the cappings with their bare hands. After a sticky clean-up, we had about 10 quarts of honey, which is about 30 pounds.
Mitchell demonstrates while Tamara tastes
The hot knife neatly uncaps the cells
Carly uncaps a frame
Tamara
Colin
This is old hat for Julia
Colin and Megan open the honey gate and let it flow!
Julia and Raina squeeze honey out of the cappings
Sticky hands
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