A Taste Of Honey

And no I am not referring to the song by Herb Albert and the Tijuana Brass - although I did listen to it while writing this blog entry.

What we have done is harvest our first batch of Honey! Nearly 1-1/2 years from getting our first Nuc we have 10 frames fully laden with honeycomb. Cheryl removed 4 frames today and since we do not yet own an extractor we were forced to harvest the honey in the traditional manner.

This means scraping the honey and wax from the frame into a food grade plastic bucket and then pouring the contents into a 5-gallon paint strainer that separates the honey from the wax by retaining the wax and allowing the honey to slowly drip through into another bucket. It appears (best guess) that we will end up with about 10 pounds of honey.

Now to the taste, I have tasted many different types of processed store bought honey as well as locally grown organic honey. The taste is very much influenced by the available pollen. We had a mixture of clover and lavender and perhaps several other plants in the near vicinity. The taste I can only describe as a buttery, caramel flavored honey. It is absolutely spectacular!

I am sure that there are many reasons to come to our little place in the Sierra National forest (perhaps Yosemite) but if there was one main reason to come, it would be this honey! So good!

One frame with Honeycomb on both sides

Scraping the honeycomb into the bucket

A bucket of honey and honeycomb

Separating the honey from the wax

Tasting the honey! Mmmm so good!