In January, I put the hive atop a wheely cart and visited my kids’s classrooms, talking to their classmates about raising bees and where honey comes from and all that. Ever since, when I visit their classes, one or two children always come up to ask when the honey will be ready. I decided that last week was the time to get to it!

The two supers – the bottom one, closest to you, is the main box with the brood chamber and pollen stores. It is where the queen lives. The one in the back is the second super I added, mostly for more brood, but I think my bees ended up using it for honey storage. 

This is a frame with brood comb built up – the brood chamber is where the queen lays her eggs.

Up close on the brood frame. You can see a white larvae, and just down from that, what looks like an emerging bee.

These bees are actually not alive, but they remained on the comb, and I thought they were really photogenic. 

These are frames with capped and uncapped honeycomb. I use a special fork-like tool to scrape the cappings off. I save them, along with the beeswax from the comb and will melt it and see what fun projects come about.

And now onto harvesting the honey:

My bench scraper came in very handy for this process – I scraped the honey, along with comb, off the frame and into a colander set over a bucket. The bucket is from Safeway – I went to the Bakery and asked for an empty food-safe bucket. They were kind enough to provide one for this project.

After a day, most of the honey had drained down into the bucket, leaving the colander full of cappings and beeswax. I soaked the cappings and beeswax in water for two days, changing the water every 24 hours, and then left the wax dry. I have it stored in a container until later when I have time to melt the beeswax down.

The honey still had some small bits of beeswax floating on the top, so when I filled a couple jars, I strained the honey again. When the honey bears arrive, I will have to figure out another way to get the honey in that is less labor intensive and messy. Perhaps I will look into cheesecloth.

Final product – half-pint jars of Northern California honey! Such a sweet treat

I think this cookbook was my very first cookbook – I remember making Honey Toffee Pennies when I was a young girl. The book is divided up into Breakfasts; Smackerels, Elevenses and Teas; Provisions for Picnics and Expotitions; Lunches and Suppers; Dessert and Party Recipes; Christmas Specialities; and Honey Sauces. And as the author, Virginia Ellison, writes in the introduction, these recipes are meant to be interchanged between meals. She encourages Poohanpiglet pancakes for lunch. My kind of cookbook author.

Honey Oatmeal Cookies were the inspiration for my recipe today, and I adapted the recipe to make a larger quantity and a little crispier over all. This recipe would be great with chocolate chips, raisins or cranberries in place of, or addition to, the chopped walnuts.

Honey Oatmeal Walnut Cookies

• 1/2 cup (1 stick) of unsalted butter, at room temperature
• 1 cup of packed brown sugar
• 1/2 cup honey
• 2 capfuls vanilla
• 2 eggs
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 cup oats
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 3/4 cup chopped walnuts

Preheat oven to 350F. 

Cream butter and brown sugar together. Mix in honey and vanilla. Add eggs one at a time and beat well.

Mix flour, oats, baking soda and salt together. Add to sugar mixture. Mix well. Add in nuts.

Using your 1 1/2″ cookie scoop, drop cookies onto parchment lined cookie sheets. Bake 12-15 minutes, until lightly golden.

Bees and honey

One of the frames from my hive, covered with yummy honey!

July 2008

Bees and garden

Bees at work

beans

Thanks for the green beans

July 2008

Bees

Bees from my beehive

July 2008

(p.s. any ideas on how to take better bee pics?)

Hive

Smoker

Make sure the smoker is going…1 sheet of newspaper, plus a handful of pine needles.

Take out the can

Give them a little smoke, and then shake, shake, shake – get

shake the bees into the hive