Farm Friday

We've had a busy week on the farm.  Our three interns, Babs, Ariana, and Charles, have been a great blessing, pitching in wherever needed and even cooking delicious meals for us!  Wednesday was a day they had been looking forward to since arriving - honey extraction day!  Getting honey out of a hive is a pretty involved process.  First, you have to get the frames out of the hives.  Here's Bill dealing with the bees:

Then you have to remove the wax caps on the comb.  We use a special hot knife for this process:

The frames are then placed in an extractor which spins the frames (four at a time) to release the honey.  The honey is then drained into a container which has several filters on top to strain out any pieces of wax.  Once that is accomplished, we open the tap to fill up the jars.  Here is the end product: