Class Trip to the Bee Hives

Twice a year my workplace closes to the public and holds a day of training, learning, food and fun, also known as SSL Staff Day. During that time, we have breakfast, meet together to learn something new or train on new equipment; have lunch; share our knowledge with workshops or other training; have a snack; have a department meeting and call it a day. We are famous for our eating!

BCC Library Staff in the meadow

This August 21st, the afternoon fun was a trip to the BCC bee hives with me. I offered this idea up, sort of as a joke, because so many of my co-workers are afraid of bees and just as many are very curious about the entire process. The boss took me up on the offer so we met at the bee hives after lunch. it was a lovely summer afternoon and a nice time of day to be outside so most people didn't mind taking a short walk. Plus, the boss said attendance at the hives was mandatory, so they all came. I had hope to be joined by the actual owner of the hives, but he was not available. I did ask his permission to go into the hives.

I opened a hive and pulled out frames which were empty of honey,nectar or brood because they had been extracted not too long ago.

frame with eggs,brood, bees & honey

empty frame

I got to show them what actual honey comb looks like and explain that the bees determined that shape by themselves and that is the shape they like to function in. I answered questions and got to tell the story of helping my father with his hives which led to more questions.









 Even the College's public relations guy, Larry, came and took pictures!

Sharing my new hobby made me realized how many of my childhood stories revolve around the bees (future blog posts formulating!)  and what an interesting childhood I had and helps explain why I have a connection to nature that many other people don't have. 

Honey, Honey, Honey, Honey......Honey

This week, I had my first hands on experience with harvesting honey. With all the years that my dad had honeybees, you'd think I've had tons of hands on experience. But no. I'm pretty sure my dad used the bees as his special place to escape all that comes with a family of 8 kids so we never actually were involved with bee work.

At my workplace, there are 2 beehives in a meadow right at the front of the campus. The meadow with all its wild flowers looks like a tiny slice of paradise as you drive into campus. The beehives just add something extra special. The groundskeeper is a novice beekeeper. He's been at it for 3 years. Last year, with 1 hive, he got 60 pounds of honey.


The Meadow

The day before the harvest, Hugh went to the hives and inserted an escape screen under the medium honey supers. The screen allows the bees to leave the supers, but not get back in. The bees do not get hurt by this, they just get confused for awhile. This is helpful because a beekeeper does not want to remove a super full of honey and bees. The bees should stay with the hive as much as possible. Also, a super full of honey weights about 60 pounds. Add a few pounds of bees and this becomes too heavy to lift.



Escape Screen
 

The day of the harvest, we met up and began to set up. A couple of tables are needed. One is used for the uncapping process and one is used for the jarring process. Uncapping is the term for opening up the honeycomb so the honey can be removed. If you are a fan of comb honey, you have eaten both the wax, in small chunks, and the honey. Not everyone enjoys chewing wax which is why honey gets removed from the comb. For each frame of honey, the caps are either sliced off with a hot knife or poked open with a spiky tool that looks like a paint roller.

Between the two tables is the extractor. The extractor is  a big aluminium or plastic tub on feet with a drum inside where the open frames sit. On the lid is a handle which turns a crank which spins the drum inside. Think of a salad spinner. It works the same way. The centrifugal force moves the liquid honey out of the frame and leaves the solid wax in place. The honey falls to the bottom of the tub. The frames come out and get put back into the supers for the bees to refill. The extractor also has a capped spout at the bottom so the honey can be poured out.

The extracted honey gets poured into a 5-gallon container with a strainer on the top to remove any wax or bees or other stuff which may have gotten into it. My dad used to call this strained stuff "slum gum". The container also has a capped spout at the bottom and that is how the jars are filled. Simple process from hive to jar in just a few hours. We extracted for about 3 hours and got about 100 pounds of honey. Community College bees sure work hard!