Okay, maybe these should have been "things I learned this week," but I learned so much about bees and honey from my friend Erica this week that I thought they deserved a post of their own.
* Honey is not bee poo, it's bee puke. Where do they poo?
* different nectar produces different color honey.
* A super is a hive box that is only for honey storage, no brood.
* A beekeeper can increase the amount of honey in a super by preventing the queen from entering the box using a queen excluder. (This seems a tad rude to me.)
* When it's time to harvest, Erica wears a hat and hood, and if she thinks she is really gonna piss "the girls" off, she tapes her boots to her pants. She doesn't wear an astronaut suit.
*(Now I am at the point where I am going to basically caption Erica's photos.) Once the honeycomb is removed from the bees and the box (the stealing of the vomit),
it is scraped off with a pretty big knife.
* and then, (this was surprising to me) the honey is extracted from the comb by squeezing it in cheesecloth. Cool!
* Once honey is packed into jars, there is a strong possibility that bears will come steal it. A honey guard is a beekeeper's best friend.
That is SO cool! And the honey guard - well, that's one fierce dude!
ReplyDeleteThe best way is to stick a chunk of comb in you mouth and chew it until the honey is all gone and spit out the comb. Kinda of like honey gum. Yum.
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