Macro

Yesterday, we harvested honey.


How to harvest honey:

1. Place a bee trap between the boxes you want to take and the boxes you want to leave, so that the bees are trapped in the bottom boxes, and you can steal the top boxes later in the day.

2. Make sure that, when you are placing the bee boxes, you don't wear very good gloves, and you take too long with whatever you are messing with, and then make the bees very angry to the point that they sting you in the hands, and your husband starts screaming, "RUN! RUN FOR YOUR LIFE!" This way, your six year old daughter who is watching from the truck (with the windows rolled up) will have a good story to tell, later.

3. Several hours later, go back and steal the boxes full of honey. Make sure and take several hundred bees with them. This will make things more interesting, back at the house, later.

4. Carefully cut the honeycomb out of the frame and place into a clean container. Make sure that you don't actually have enough containers, because again, this will make it more interesting. Run in and out of the house a few times to fetch things. Completely saturate doorknobs with honey. Honey makes doorknobs work better.

5. Strain the honey out of the honeycomb by cutting the tops off of the sealed honeycomb and set it over cheese cloth. Under the cheese cloth, place a colender, and under the colender, place a bowl to catch the honey. Put it all in the oven with the light on over an hour or two.

6. Pour honey into jars. This can be done poorly by a small child who is covered in honey.

7. Put lids on the jars.

8. Boil the jars for half an hour, to pasteurize. (Like when you make jam. Or don't make jam. I imagine you probably don't make jam.)

9. Go around the house and catch all of the bees with a butterfly net. Release them.

10. Repeat until you are out of honeycomb.

Note: As of right now, we have 20+ pints of honey, and we are definitely not out of honeycomb. Also, as of now, I am sticky. And sweet.


BAH went to work today so he could get some rest, he said.