Our Honey
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“The bee is more honored than other animals, not because she labors, but because she labors for others.”
-St. John Chrysostom

Harvesting

After a year of care and monitoring, if all has gone well, the hives will have an excess of honey that can be harvested for human use. The Middle School collectively harvests the frames of honey to be extracted making sure to leave an adequate supply for the bees to live in during the winter. 
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To remove the frames we first use a smoker and puff the smoke around the hive entrance. We then remove the top with a hive tool and smoke the opening to drive the bees lower into the hive. We then remove the inner cover which can be tricky as the bees tend to seal it with propolis, a resin-like mixture that bees collect from tree buds and bark. 

The next step is to remove any lingering bees from this area. To do this, we use a simple, wide, silky “bee brush” to gently brush them off the frame. We then pull the bee-free frames out and set them aside in a lidded storage bin until you’re ready to take your honey-laden frames inside for extraction.

Extraction: A community experience
At Woodside, we use all members of the school to help with the process of extraction; from the oldest to the youngest student everyone has an opportunity to participate.
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Extraction time is exciting at Woodside and begins with the Middle School giving lessons which we have been preparing the week before. The lessons we give to the younger students are about how nectar is collected and honey is made. Our lesson this year was a play explaining the two processes and then we organized an activity where students acted as hive bees or field bees.

The extraction process can take several days depending on how much honey we are able to harvest that year. This year we harvested 157 pounds from only two of our hives! The Middle School sets up the classroom for extraction by cleaning our equipment and making sure everything is covered with plastic to prevent getting honey everywhere. 
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We use a manual extractor which uses centrifugal force to draw the honey from the frames. Younger students are all given the opportunity to use the hand crank to help us extract the honey. While some students are extracting with us others are getting the opportunity to taste honey and honeycomb right off a frame!

Cappings

​Prior to the start of the extraction process starts, all the cappings have to be removed with a sharp knife and a tool called a uncapping fork, a metal fork used to bust the caps open so the honey can come out smoothly. The Middle School takes care of this task as it is a tricky process. 

Once all the honey has been extracted from the frames, the honey is strained into food grade storage buckets. As it is poured into the bucket it is strained and all the wax from the cappings is collected. 
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Cappings are wax that is put on by the bees in the hive after the honey has ripened in the cells. These caps can be rendered later for beeswax. We will post more about our projects with cappings on our blog post. 

Sweet Times Ahead

And that is how we get the delectable treat we call honey!

To learn more about how we bottle our honey and get ready to sell visit our blog