A sweet fall chore ~ October 7, 1999

David Heiller

The hum from the bee hive rose to a roar as I lifted the lid off and puffed them with smoke.

A stiff breeze swirled through the trees. Don’t work with bees on a windy day, the bee books say, but bees never could read very well.

David and the hives.

Besides, it was October 2, and I was about one month late in doing this job. Wind or no wind, I was going to take that honey.

I squeezed the bellows of the smoker, sending more thick smoke down into the hive. The bees buzzed their disapproval, but most of them retreated into the hive. Smoke confuses them and sends them running to protect their queen.

I couldn’t blame the bees for grumbling. They had worked hard for that extra box of honey.

I lifted nine frames from the box on top. I used a hive tool, which is like a small crowbar, and a gripping tool to pry out each frame. They didn’t come out easily. In addition to weighing a couple pounds, each one was glued into place by bee glue, otherwise known as propolis. Bees like to seal things up. That’s one reason I should have done this job a month earlier. It would have given the bees more time to winterize their hive.

Each frame had bees walking over it. I brushed them off with a soft brush as best I could, then set each frame in an empty box in the garden cart. Some of the frames had every inch covered with honey. Some were only half full. Seldom do I see a perfect frame.

The air was filling up with bees. One found a hole in my glove and stung me. It didn’t hurt much. I’ve been stung so many times that it doesn’t bother me anymore.

I put the lid back on the hive, which now consisted of two boxes of honey and brood. That should be enough to get them through the winter, especially if it is a mild one like last year.

Last fall I had two bee hives. Both made it through the winter of 1998-99. Then one of them swarmed—the queen and about half the bees left. Usually when bees swarm you never see them again, but this time they took up residence in an empty hive about 10 feet away. I didn’t see it happen but where else did that new hive of bees come from? The bees in the old hive made a new queen and were back in business, so I had three hives this year.

I moved to the second hive and took out more frames of honey than the first one. It must have been the hive that didn’t swarm. The third hive was about the same as the first.

I pushed the heavy garden cart to the sauna, put the boxes inside, and covered them with two towels, so that the bees in the hives wouldn’t find them and start retrieving their honey.

The next morning I lit the sauna and let it heat up for a couple hours. I took the extractor from the garage, along with my decapping knife. I turned on the radio to listen to the Vikings play Tampa Bay while I worked.

It was a beautiful fall day, sunny and crisp. The thermometer had read 21 when I got up, but now it was up to 40! Leaves floated steadily down from the two maple trees by the house. It was fun to shuffle through them.

I cut the wax off the top of each frame using the decapping knife, which has a heating element in the blade. The blade gets hot and slices through the wax very easily. The capping wax has a lot of honey in it, so that gets saved. It will get strained when all the extracting is done.

I chewed some of the wax while I worked. It’s like gum filled with honey. It’s so good that it’s almost addicting.

I put two de-capped frames in the extractor and twirled the handle of the extractor as fast as I could. Inside of the stainless steel cylinder, honey flew out of the cells in the frames by cen­trifugal force and trickled down the side of the container to the bottom.

At first it didn’t seem like much honey was coming out. But as I did frame after frame, the honey accumulated at the bottom. When it became hard to turn the handle, I put an empty ice cream container on the floor and opened the spigot at the bottom of the extractor.

Honey oozed out of the hole and into the bucket. It’s a sight that will put a smile on your face. Liquid gold.

The Vikings scored a touchdown, and another, and another. Each time they scored, I dipped my hands in a bucket of warm water and waited for my son, who came out for a double hand slap. It’s a ritual we have.

By the time the game was over, the Vikings had won 21-14 and I had won too, with 4-1/2 gallons of honey as proof. I carried it into the house, along with the wax from the caps.

I put the empty frames back on the garden cart along with the empty extractor and the two pans that had held the cap wax. I took all this back to the bee hives. The bees would find it and clean it up. It’s amazing. They don’t waste anything. In a few days there won’t be a trace of honey on the pans or extractor or frames. Then I’ll put everything away for next year.

“The honey is dark this year,” Cindy commented when she saw the ice cream buckets come in. I hadn’t noticed, because when I was extracting, there were many different shades of honey. The color depends on what flowers the nectar is from. For example, basswood makes a light honey, while sumacs make a dark honey.

I wonder why the honey was so dark this year? Usually our honey is light, because we have a lot of basswood trees in the woods.

I’ll let the mystery bee. The honey tastes great no matter what color. And putting it up is a satisfying fall chore.