Collecting Honey

Started with 5 frames of bees in July 2011 in our San Francisco backyard.

Bees multiplied to 7 boxes and 70 frames by June 2012.

Inspecting frames to see if honey is capped.

Entire top box is ready for harvesting.

Bees ran out of space and built comb in the attic.

Collecting the honey comb.

Weighing one box, 10 frames of honey, 55 pounds.

Removing the wax caps with a hot knife to extract the honey.

Spin the honey out at our local bee club at the Randall Museum.

4 frames in the spinner.

10 frames of empty comb and 12 quarts of honey.

Returning the box of empty wax comb to the hive.

Strain through a paint filter to remove bits of wax.

This will delay the onset of crystallization.

Liquid gold.

Ready to deliver to friends and neighbors.