It sure has been a buzzzzy summer…see what I did there? I’m starting to make honeybee humor, I think the bees are finally getting to me!

Over Labor Day Weekend we decided that it was time to remove the honey supers, move the honeybees, and process the honey. Wow that was short sentence, lets just say the process is much easier said than done.

Our first summer with honeybees was a total success! Each hive has two healthy brood boxes on the bottom, and the Noir Hive (left) came close to filling two honey supers, while the Gris Hive (right) completely filled one honey super.

In order to process the honey, we first had to remove the honey supers from each hive along with all the honeybees.

The Renaissance Man and I worked as a team; he would pull out a honey frame and brush the bees off, I would slightly open the lid to the empty box sitting on the wall, The Renaissance Man would drop in the honey filled frame, and I would quickly put the lid back on before any bees could get in. Speed was the name of the game!

It was a beautiful day for pulling the honey supers.

We then moved all three honey supers in a wheel barrow from the top of the backyard to the garage where we stored them overnight. We wanted to give the bees a chance to get situated in their newly confined hive space over night before we closed them them in and moved them to their new home.

Typically we wouldn’t move the bees, but as you see in the photo below, we’ve cleared some earth away at the top of the back retaining wall because we getting ready to put in a paver patio. Since lots of workers and a vibratory plate compactor is needed to complete the patio, we thought it would be best to temporarily move the bees while the patio is being constructed.

I couldn’t resist taking a few photos of the full honey frames. The one below was slightly nicked when we were removing the honeybees, and you’ll notice the honey already starting to ooze.

I’m sure you’ll understand that for quality control purposes, I had to do a quick tasting! Don’t tell The Renaissance Man.

The sunrise was beautiful on Labor Day, and again was perfect weather for beekeeping. On Labor Day we spent almost all day laboring, but I’m not sure if the labor really counts since it’s more like a labor of love. Yes, we really do love our honeybees!

We tried to get to the hives early in the morning so we could seal them up before moving, but even by 6:30am the bees were on the move. Unfortunately, some bees did get left behind. Certainly a lessoned learned for next year, get to the bees before daylight!

Because we had quite a few bees on the outside of the hive, I decided to put together a make shift bee suit before committing to help The Renaissance Man lift each hive into the wheel barrow and then into the back of the truck. I’ll let you use your imagination on what my bee suit looked like…leather gloves, a car mechanic suit, a baseball hat, and a scarf. Let’s just say I totally win the “Wife of Year Award!”

On our way to the “temporary housing location,” we made a few stops to make sure the tie down straps were doing their job. We did have a few more bees escape along the journey, but the majority of the bees did arrive at their final destination.

Three points for anyone who can identify the grain mill in the background!

Ok, so I hope you let your imagination run wild with the idea of my “make shift bee suit.” All I can say is I’m pretty sure no one ever thought to wear a scarf quite like this. I could just barely see through the scarf which made walking on uneven ground a serious challenge. Thankfully I listen to directions pretty well, and The Renaissance Man was extremely patient with me. We managed to get the bees moved without a single sting!

Once settled, the bees were happy to get out of the hives and explore their new home for the next few weeks!

Meanwhile we started to get things ready to process the honey. The Renaissance Man’s Grandfather also keeps honeybees and he let us use his honey extractor.

The lovely Obie even joined us in the shop, she was excited to see what all the commotion was about. Such a happy girl smiling for the camera.

We did a quick test run with the extractor to make sure all the gears were working and that our honey frames would fit.

And then it was time to uncap the the honey frames and get things spinning! We learn a lot in our first time around spinning honey. For one, you may notice the bees in this picture. Bees have a strong sense of smell, and it didn’t take long for a few of them to find us uncapping and spinning the honey. They weren’t bad, but next time we’ll make an effort to do this inside. And hopefully next year we can rent some commercial kitchen space!

We were so busy spinning that I didn’t get a whole lot of pictures of the process. I was working fast to open the honey super and hand The Renaissance Man fresh frames. He would then uncap the honey with a knife, and the honey frame would go right into the honey extractor to be spun.

Can you spot Obie? She was curious as can be about the honey, and even managed to get a few tastes along the way.

After spinning all the frames we drained and filtered the honey into five gallon bucket that we fitted with a special spout to make it easier to fill jars.

It’s hard to believe that in a manner of about ten hours we went from full honey frames to…

Beautiful jars of honey! The Renaissance Man surprised me and picked up some fancy honey jars from Ruhl Bee Supply. I even had some honeycomb scrapbooking paper left over from our wedding and it turned out to match perfectly.

The bottle says it all, Eight Ounces Pure Honey!

I could be bias, but this honey is the best honey I’ve ever tasted! The flavors are so complex. All summer our bees have been pollinating everything in a five mile radius, which means our honey is truly Dundee Hills Honey. I taste notes of citrus, blackberry, cinnamon and tart apple. The honey has so many wonderful flavors and I feel like we’ve just uncovered our very own pot of amber gold!