Tall Clover Farm

An Unexpected Honey Harvest

Last Saturday, on a dreamy afternoon pulled from the canvas of a Maxfield Parrish painting, my friends Sam, Dom, Angie, Lucy and Isabel paid a visit. Fresh from their cheese-making class just down the road at neighbor Kelsey’s place, my intrepid and spirited adventurers joined me on the lawn and shared some stories from the morning’s dairy diary. Lucy and Isabel kept Boz, Gracie, and the hammock busy, while the “adults” soaked up the sun like turtles on a pond log.

Lucy and Isabel transformed my couch-potato comrades into bombastic bullies primed for play. When Boz and Gracie finally collapsed from too much fun, the girls asked if we could go check out the beehives. Delighted by their brave inquiry, I said, “Absolutely!” Besides, one more minute facing skyward on my mossy mattress and I would have had to call in a front loader to remove me from the lawn and prop me on the porch.  I quickly assured Sam, Dom and Angie that the hives were vacant of bees, but I did suggest everyone should stand back at first, just in case I was wrong. (I’m not so sure that made them feel any better.)

In the top-bar hive, I removed a few frames and surprisingly found two corners of capped honey. Isabel and Lucy were intrigued. They asked, “Can we try some?” To which, I replied, “Absolutely!” Without hesitation, they drew their fingers through the comb and ladled out a luxurious swipe of sunlit honey. Their giggles said it all, and they dove back in, making quick handy work of the bees’ parting gift.

In my other hive, a Langstroth type, Isabel (quick study that she is) noticed more frames with honey, an observation punctuated by the licking of one’s sweet fingers. How I overlooked those frames, I’ll never know. We removed the frames jammed with honey, and took them into the house, and stacked them gently on my dining table, which was now covered in plastic. In a matter of minutes, the perfume of our beehive booty infused the house with the intoxicating scent of a thousand summer flowers. Based on experience, I moved all of the chairs away from the table, just in case Boz was in the mood to summit the table for further investigation and a sticky snack.

After dinner, my joyful entourage loaded up the car and headed off to the ferry, where a spectacular sunset view of the Olympic Mountains most certainly awaited them.  I assured my young beekeepers, that I’d share the spoils of our treasure hunt (that is once I extracted the honey).

There is a thing called a honey extractor, an ingenious bucket devised to spin the honey out of the comb by applying centrifugal force, much like we rid lettuce of moisture in a salad spinner.My solution was much less elegant; I scrapped the honey-laden comb into a food grade bucket. I then added about a quart of that mixture to my grandmother’s cone-shaped food mill, so it would act as a sieve separating the honey from the beeswax. Placed in a sunny window, the warming honey began to pool, and find its escape route through the tiny holes of the vintage sieve. The slow-motion flow of honey was quite mesmerizing, an oozing rivulet of liquid gold seeking equilibrium slowly but surely. (Who needs TV?)

Video: Streaming Honey…

All in all, I gathered one gallon of honey over a two-day period. The saying, “Slower than honey in January” is well-based. I’ve yet to bottle it up, simply enjoying the fragrant tub of honey on my counter capturing the light and my imagination.

For this twelve pounds of honey is truly miraculous and a gift of gold; it represents:

• 24 million flowers
  • bees gather nectar from 2 million flowers per pound
• 660,000 bee air miles 
  • bees of one hive fly about 55,000 miles to gather the nectar needed for one pound of honey

Here’s to bees in your garden and honey on your toast!