10.8.06 - Fresh Honey and Stale Kryptonite

Yesterday from the back deck with the camera's zoom lens, I watched J play beekeeper and remove honey-filled frames from our two beehives. We then set up shop in the garage. We had two five gallon buckets; one had triple-cheesecloth to let honey drip from the wax caps, and one had a double plastic filter sieve which were for the extractor to pour into.

We extracted about 10 western frames and nine or ten deep frames, making about 4 gallons of honey. About two-thirds was dark honey and the rest was light. I don't know which is from the blackberry flow and which is from the rest of the summer's blossoms (apple and pear trees, wild flowers, clover, garden blooms, etc.). The dark honey has a stronger flavor with kind of a bite to it.

The extractor holds three frames and spins with a hand crank. We put in three frames and spun for five minutes and then flipped them over for another five. Ten minutes of centrifugal force did a fine job removing what took the bees thousands of round trips to the garden and elsewhere to store.

About fifty or so bees made the trip into the garage attached to the frames or flying behind the beekeepers. While J would cut off the honeycomb caps with the electric hot-knife, I held it at an angle so the caps would fall forward into the holding tray. One of the frames was double combed. The bees had capped off the honey comb and then built another layer over it, filling them both with honey. Apparently we got our bee space a little off. The double comb had a crawl space underneath which had a dozen or so bees lurking about.

While holding it for J one of the girls stung me on my palm. I remember a year and a half ago when a bee sting was no big deal. Back then I thought I was the perfect candidate to be a beekeeper since multiple bee stings cause me little pain. However, this was my first bee sting since spending a night in the hospital after my heart slowed down and tried stopping and since my doctor said, "If you get stung again, you will probably die." But in the next breath, my doc said that bee allergy shots are one of the few sure things in medicine.

I started the shots last summer but going once a week to the doctor's office for one to two hours at a time was a little too much; so I quit once the shots were equal to one bee sting. Apparently that was enough treatment to render my kryptonite ineffective, since I'm alive and well and once again invincible.

Note: No bees were injured in the making of this blog (except for the one that stung me - she's dead now).

Tomorrow we bottle the honey. I plan on setting aside one gallon to make mead, which is supposedly man's oldest fermented beverage. It's the type of drink which will make you want to sack a village and hang out with drunken marauders - in other words, the perfect rugger beverage.

Next week we are rafting the Wild and Scenic section of the Rogue River and staying in lodges in lieu of camping.