Buzzzzzz. Buzzzz. Buzzzzzz. Buzzzzzzzzzzzzz. Buzz.
That’s right – BEES!
So today, my ministry consisted of helping to harvest honey. For most of my life {all of it except the past 7 months to be exact} I would have interpreted this as running to Wally World or Kroger. Today, God gave me an all new perspective and let me say – I see the sweetness of honey in a completely new light!
It all begins with a queen and her hive. Then you involve her minions – the drones. {Drones = male honey bees} Well actually, let me back up. Purchasing or preparing the hive boxes comes first. After all, if you don’t have somewhere to put her majesty, you best not take her away from her initial home. Bad life choice.
Once your hive boxes are made and ready to inhabit bees, you place your queen inside this little box and shut her in with packing sugar over her escape route. The sugar draws the drones to come and eat away the sugar and thus free the queen into the hive. The process is very important. You do not want your queen to leave the hive. If she does, the drones follow her, and you are left with a box of hive frames. Hahahahahaha
Once all the bees are in place and know their queen, they pollinate on flowers and start to create the honeycomb. The honey comes shortly after. What are the specifics of this>>God only knows. All I know is that once the honey is ready to harvest, a very brave soul goes out to the hive box, pulls off the lid, and raises the frame out of the box. Now I understand this does not sound like one would need much courage, but imagine hundreds of bees not only on the honeycomb of the frame, but also buzzing around you! Okay…so maybe for some of you out there, this would not be intimidating, but for me – I was terrified!
The frame has been pulled. The bees have been smoked off. And the honey is ready to be harvested. The honeycomb frame is held up and picked apart by this thin-pinned comb. It is thicker than you could imagine. It flows really well once you pry away the honeycomb wall. After you get all the honeycomb off both sides of the frame – in a timely manner not to lose all the flying honey – the harvester places the frame in a spin barrel.
Spin. Spin. Spin. Spin. Spin. For a good little bit. Two minutes or so. Then you flip the frames in the barrel vertically. This allows the honey to be spun off both sides of the frame. Spin. Spin. Spin.Spin. Spin. Again. Open the lid. And out come the frames to go back into the hive boxes.
Now to get the honey from the bottom of the barrel, you must have a bucket, a strainer, and of course a hole at the bottom of the barrel to open. When, and only when, you have the strainer and bucket in place, you open the barrel at the bottom to release the flowing honey into the strainer and into the bucket. Finally, you have your pure honey – the sweetest honey you could ever imagine tasting! With no sugar! Imagine that!
