I must admit, as wonderful as having our own honey is, that was a heck of a lot of work. It wasn’t even the spinning that was bad but the clean up. Of course, we did harvest in our house, next to the wood stove (so the honey would be warm and easier to spin).
We had the fire roaring and took turns spinning frames as it was still a lot of work and required holding the spinner still so it didn’t rock all over.
I had experimented with the hive by having some frames with foundation and some without. Of course, the frames without foundation did not have the comb aligned so that it would fit in the spinner. Thus, I removed it and stuck it in some cheesecloth to be squished and drip out with gravity.
I wanted to have little, adorable jars of honey to give as Christmas gifts. These turned out so well and were so well received that I may get more bees just to do this again.
As the bees died I scraped all of the wax off of the frames and began melting it down, over and over and over and over and you get the idea. This is the final product. One candle jar full of clean bees wax. No idea what we are going to do with it.
All in all it was an experience. Again, I was pregnant, so the workload was really hard on me. We are enjoying the honey, we estimate 2 gallons worth, but I don’t know if it was worth it.