It's honey time!

Look how happy he is! 

Saturday was honey harvesting time.  The bees had finally capped over the honey, so we borrowed an extractor from a friend and we were in business.

It's actually a simple process.  You use the electric knife to uncap your wax, place it in the spinner and spin. 



From there it goes through a double strainer to get out the impurities and wax. 

Then it's just a matter of putting it in mason jars and your done!

It's time consuming, but not hard at all.

The most amazing part about it for me was seeing just how little waste is in the whole system.  After extracting the honey, our porch was a sticky mess.  We also had a lot of wax from where we uncapped the frames.  All we did was stick the extractor and the bucket of wax up by the bee yard.  The bees cleaned all the honey off of the extractor, the wax...even my porch!  They take everything back to their hives. 

I used the "cleaned" wax to make my own beeswax for a project Tracy & I are trying today. 

Almost makes me like the bees a little more. 

Almost.