Today we were up before dawn and on our way to an Entomology contest in the next county over. I post more about this on my 4H blog so go take a look and all the fun the youth had during the contest and while they waited for the results!
After the contest, we headed north about an hour's drive in time to pick up a honey extractor. Yes! We decided to make the insect theme going for the afternoon as well.
Last week when we made arrangements for a fellow beekeeper to take care of our hive for the year we are gone...we discovered that we had a busy little bee hive! They had already FILLED their top super with honey for us! Wasn't that a nice gift from them...now we can take Texas honey with us to California!
We have a great group of beekeepers here and the association has an extractor to loan out for members.
We had thought we would wait until tomorrow to actually do the extraction but we are going to be so busy the next few days...we took the time to just get the job done! We harvested about 2 gallons of honey from our little hive...so proud of our bees! This also means they are great pollinators...it is a good feeling to know that we can be a part of this amazing part of nature! It always amazes me!
This was also our first time to extract honey by ourselves. SO...thank you to all the beekeepers from our past who have helped us get to this point in our beekeeping experience...We could not have done it without all the knowledge we have been given over the years!
It was funny but messy...we had honey from head to toe by the time we completed the extraction and cleaned out all the equipment.
We also had help from our future bee queen...she even changed into her special beekeeper outfit to help! She really enjoyed uncapping the cells!
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