As the days grow shorter and colder, food becomes more scarce and our instincts should inspire all of us to take stock of our food supplies. Past generations did not have the convenience of 24-hour grocery stores continuously stocked with food from the entire globe. In these bygone eras, people knew to plan ahead to store enough food to last the entire winter. While some would find it unnecessary in this modern era, I find that preparation forces us to introspect and reevaluate our needs.

While I may rely upon the food in my root cellar, the bees must rely upon the excess honey they store during the year. As their protector, one of my primary tasks is ensuring they have enough food for the winter. For this reason, I have to be very careful about how much honey I take from them or they will not survive the winter. Overwintering is very hard on the bees, and is one of the most common causes for lost hives. Imagine 12,000 bees huddled in a giant ball eating honey for the sole purpose of keeping warm, protected from the icy winds by only a 1/2" thick pine box, and you begin to understand their predicament.

I received the bees in June from Richard Hosey, and to be honest, since then they have stored a disappointingly small amount of honey. Still, I wanted to try some of the honey before I started feeding them sugar syrup. So yesterday, October 2nd, I pulled three mostly-full frames of honey, and used the crush and strain method of honey extraction, which beekeeper Linda does an excellent job describing in her blog.

Since it was my first time, I made a few mistakes during the process. I didn't anticipate the ability of the bees to find and smell their honey from distances. After I cut the comb from the frames, I began crushing the comb to release the honey. I placed this crushed comb inside of a 400 micron filter to separate the honey from the wax. I placed the filter on top of a metal bowl, and covered this with a black cloth to allow the sun to heat the filtering setup. Within 2 hours, most of the honey had dripped through the filter, and I was rewarded with about a half gallon of honey. This setup also attracted the interest of more than a few bees, who had no problem smelling their honey through the black cloth placed atop the filter.

Aesthetically, the honey is a very nice light golden color, despite a large amount of trapped air bubbles. In the future I think I will extract the honey at another location away from the beeyard, and wait several days to allow dissolved air to reach the surface before bottling.

While I may take a few more frames this season, my current focus is preparing for the winter. When the icy winds begin blowing across the hills of Kentucky, me and my bees will be prepared.