Mrs. Catherine Rose and I harvested our first two frames of honey from our St. Ambrose bee hive today!

Katie is holding one of the frames–the bottom of the frame had some uncapped comb cells, but most of it was capped (as you can see from the whitish looking covering on most of the frame).

We had to wait until most of the cells were capped with wax because that is how the bees indicate that the nectar has been sufficiently dehumidified enough to pass as honey.

Nectar is the sugary liquid produced by flowers that the bees gather, and it is made up of around 80% water and 20% sugar, along with little bits of flower-particles that give the nectar and therefore the honey distinctive aromas and tastes.

Honey requires that the nectar only have about 17% water and 83% sugar, which the bees have broken down from sucrose into the two component sugars, glucose and fructose (which account for most of the matter in honey). Honey also typically includes many other vitamins and healthy minerals.

Here is Katie holding the frame before we brought it inside:

We prepared the bucket and strainer to filter the honey from the beeswax comb. First we were going to use cheesecloth, but it looked too porous, so we switched to a cotton fabric that hopefully is not too fine.

Here is the honey after we cut it off the frames, ready to be crushed and strained. It’s quite amazing stuff.

Soon I will post a video that Katie took of me crushing the honey comb into the strainer. Currently, the honey is filtering through the strainer into the bucket and should finish filtering in a few hours’ time.