It's a bit sticky!

First blog, first post and first attempt at harvesting the honey from the bee hives at the bottom of the garden. What a day!

We've had the bees for nearly a year now and, apart from a few hairy moments - see Apple and Blackberry to be posted in the near future - they've been no trouble. Well, not for me because I'm not in charge of 'em, but I don't think N0bby's lost any sleep over them either.

I've been banging on for a couple of weeks now about harvesting the honey but Nobby's been a bit reluctant and I wasn't sure for why. But late yesterday afternoon, he donned his sexy, figure hugging, fits where it touches bee suit and, armed with his smoker, casually sauntered off to the bottom of the garden. I didn't see him go, he didn't say goodbye, so I couldn't wish him luck in his adventure, but I did see him come back with two frames from the hives. Most of the equipment was out - except of course the book telling us how to extract the stuff - and so we proceeded to do what we do best - wing it. I took the wax caps off the frames (it would have been better if I'd heated the knife, but I'll know next time), and some of it was runny and some wasn't. We put the frames in the spinner and spun, but not for long enough and we didn't turn the frames round to get the honey out of the other side, but we'll know next time, then we sieved it but the set honey doesn't go through the sieve so we'll have to think about that one. Not sure how much honey we're going to get from this forage - a couple of pounds for a few tasters I suppose, but I did extract some beeswax, and I've made a cross between a lip balm and a furniture polish. I'll be honest here, lavender lip balm doesn't taste particularly pleasant so minor adjustment to be made there but I reckon once I've polished the bedside cabinet, it'll look ravishing. The honey's still being sieved, and apparently we have to let it stand for a day to let the air bubbles rise before we bottle it, so the kitchen's still looking a bit like a Queen Bee's boudoir.

The honey tastes like .... honey. The whole of downstairs smells of honey and I'm having honey on toast for breakfast tomorrey if I'm not sick of it by then. And tonight I'll spend my evening washing up honey covered buckets, sieves, taps, muslin, floors and walls. We should have collected the whole hive really to make it worthwhile, but we'll know next time.