September 5th, 2014

The Laurel Creek Outdoor and Environmental Education Centre has four bee hives. Two hives survived last winter, and this spring we split the surviving hives in half to create two more hives. So now we have four again… This week we took the surplus honey off the hives. Each hive can produce up to 45 kg of surplus honey in a good year. When you take the honey frames out of the hive, you need to take off a layer of wax covering the honey cells. This is me working with a hot wax remover:

Once the wax is removed, you put the frames in a honey extractor which spins the frames so quickly that the honey flies out of the honeycomb.

Once you get the honey out of the frames, you filter it and put it in jars. No additives, no preservatives. Delicious!

Our final total was 122 kg. We thought it was a pretty good year considering that we started the spring with only two hives.