Booty From The Robbery

Not that kind of Booty, GEEZ, get your mind out of the gutter!

After our successful robbery.  I had to process the treasure.

The scene of the crime…

I was pretty excited with my bucket of golden goodness, and may not have thought the whole process of extracting the honey from the cleanliness prospective.  Let me just say right here and now, I am a bit of a clean freak!  Don’t ask my children about this, they make a way bigger deal about it than it really is!!  But I like my stuff clean!

My plan was to take the bucket wit the comb and honey onto the back patio, with 1. a metal spatula (to smash the comb and allow the honey to release), 2. a small serrated knife (to cut small chunks of comb to place in some of the mason jars), 3. several mason jars and a few towels.

I set up at the table in a comfortable spot and get to work.   I was pretty excited and confident in my plan.

My plan sucked!  

First of all, the bees found me within minutes.  Initially there was just one lady buzzing me, I ignored her, but within minutes there were a dozen.  Of course at this point my hands were covered with honey.  Well, I had to make a hasty retreat into the house, which meant that I had to touch too many things with sticky hands (I won’t name them all).  No problem I told myself, I can clean that up later, so I set everything up on my kitchen counter and got back to work, still with a belly full of excitement.  Of course what I realized after I had went in and out several times bringing in all of my materials, was that I had dripped honey on the patio and walked right in it and tracked it all over the hardwood floors in my kitchen.  No problem I told myself, I can mop that up later, still pretty excited.  I set out a large bowl with a strainer on top to catch the wax, worked perfectly, but I underestimated the amount of honey I had and the bowl wasn’t big enough, so I got out a larger bowl, and moved the strainer to the new bowl, which dripped honey all over the counter.  No problem I told myself, I can wipe that up later, at this point my excitement was pretty derailed.  I got 99% of all the honey out of the comb, and the honey into the bowls, now I had to pour the honey into each jar.  Of course, not all of it made it into the jars.  Yep you guessed it,  I’m not going to tell you what I told myself, but my excitement was gone and I wanted the whole ordeal over with!  Thankfully as I was ready to pour the honey into my jars, my dear sweet husband came home and said “why is everything so sticky?”  Ladies, do I need to tell you what he heard from me??  Husbands your probably cringing, cause you know what he heard from me!

He did pick up my sticky camera and snap a few pics for me, so all was forgiven!

My word of advice for extracting honey, be better prepared than I was.  Next time I will pop up one of our folding tables in the garage, close the garage door and line the table with wax paper I will have a bucket of warm, sudsy water with plenty of towels, not one or two!  I will also bring in the dogs to do a final inspection for leftover honey! 🙂

In my defense, it was my first time! 🙂

GEEZ, not that first time, again with the dirty thoughts!

Related articles

• My first jar of honey! (ahealthylifeforme.com)
• Extracting Honey from the Wax Comb (quinncreative.wordpress.com)
• The Color of Honey (blogs.scientificamerican.com)
• Local Honey is Amazing (stepherotica.wordpress.com)