harvesting honey

Before I talk about honey, I have to talk about the migraine attack I had this weekend. It's getting worse. It used to be this thing where it would hit me and as long as I was able to sleep it off after popping a few pills, I would be ok. Now it lingers for days, even after sleeping. I can't stand it. It starts in my eyes, and then just penetrates deep into my skull and my head feels like it got hit with a baseball bat and my brain just throbs. This time it started on Friday. It really started in the morning, as I was getting ready to go to work- as soon as I popped my contacts into my eyes, it didn't feel right- but I didn't realize it was a full-blown migraine until early in the afternoon. I immediately took two Excedrin for Migraine pills and hoped it would kick in. By 4 pm I was in a cold sweat, just praying for it to be 5 pm so I can go home and lie down in a dark room. I wasn't able to leave work until past 6. All weekend long it came and went. Sometimes it would be so bad I wanted to vomit. It wasn't until Sunday afternoon I felt my giggly, happy self again. What a drag!
5-6 years ago, I used to have to go to the ER and get shot up with morphine for the pain to stop. But at that time, I was really sick for a lot of other reasons, too. I'm just disappointed that these migraines have come back. I really hope there's a way to cure myself of this. The pain in my upper shoulders and upper back and these migraine attacks are really no way to live. If anyone has any suggestions, it would be great. There's gotta be something more I can do to relax my muscles and prevent these horrible migraines.

Honey Talk
So.. the only thing we are waiting on are the extractors from Sacramento Honeybee Co.
We have a reservation to rent the equipment for next Saturday.
We are hoping to harvest something around 70 pounds of raw honey.

What do you mean, you ask.
Oh, Paul keeps a hive of honeybees in the backyard.
Oh, and there are probably something like 10,000 bees or something crazy like that.

This year, bless his heart, he smoked the bees and retrieved the frames of honey without me. I would have helped, happily, but the bees really scare me. Especially because I got stung last year. They get really angry and noisy and it's the scariest thing when we are smoking them and they know we're there to take their honey.

Now, I can give you tips on how to harvest your own honey, but I think my instructions and Paul's would differ. Plus, you'd have to start off with a hive full of bees, so I don't know how many of you would be all that interested in the how-to's of harvesting honey. Here are a few photos of what it involves:

Well, I guess the rules are simple. Do it on a warm (preferably hot) day. Most of the working bees would be out and about, collecting pollen. You want the hive to be as empty as possible, for obvious reasons. Then you open the top lid and start to blow smoke into the hive. Use a smoker and pieces of burlap are good, they burn longer and you will need long-burning materials to keep the bees off you and away from the hive. Notice how Paul doesn't wear a veil or a suit or gloves or anything for protection. This is the kind of craziness that scares me in addition to the angry bees.

This is a picture of my swollen thumb- the bee that sacrified his life to protect his flock and his honey was sadly hanging on by his stinger on my wound, and I had to flick him off with my other hand. And then, I howled in pain for hours.
Getting the honey is the hardest part, because we take out one frame out at a time, and run it into the house and into the kitchen. The trick is to do this without getting stung. Mind you, the bees will chase you and they will die and try to kill you to protect their honey.

But people don't realize the work that is involved after getting all the frames in the house. I don't have pictures of the labor from last year, but maybe this year I'll be sure to snap a few photos.

We weren't able to get as many frames last year and we ended up spilling a whole bunch on the kitchen floor, so our honey harvest came out to only a few meager pounds.

Here are some more photos of the honey being put into jars and me wrapping them and making them pretty to give to our loved ones as gifts.

This year, we are hoping to have a lot more honey. Here are a few preview photos of the batch from this year.

Doesn't that look delicious? It doesn't get any fresher than this. You can just cut a piece of this honeycomb and pop it in your mouth for some of the freshest honey you will ever taste. I'm really excited about getting started on harvesting this honey and getting them into jars and seeing how many we'll have! They make such nice gifts.