Harvest day 2016

Let me start by saying I'm flabbergasted by this...

Considering I spent much of June worrying about my bees and even considering feeding them - because how could they possibly be finding enough to eat when it rains for 28 of 30 days? Never mind find a surplus for me to steal!

They really made up for it in July.  

I have eight - yes Eight -that's 8 supers to extract!!

No time for lollygagging - need to get everything clean and ready for a marathon of stickiness...

There's buckets and a settling tank to wash and dry...

 




The kitchen gets covered by old shower curtains and the extractor plugged in...

Then its just a case of uncapping each frame in turn...

 

 




and with the help of my glamorous assistant...

I can get a small stack of frames waiting for their turn in the extractor...

I LOVE  the actual extraction.  Watching the honey start to sparkle on the inside of the tank as it gets flung out of each cell.  The air feels almost heavy with the smell of honey.  Surely this is the BEST kind of candyfloss?

Gently does it at first...

 

Then with a bit of speed it floods out...

Meanwhile,  at the bottom of the extractor... nothing is happening - this year's honey is super thick!!!

...and then gradually,.....ever ....so....slowly....it starts to flow through the filters...

 

 

Glamorous assistant proves his worth again by decanting the bucket into the settling tank... 

Its amazing how many little flakes of beeswax come off the frames.... 

 Note to self:  NEVER forget Honey flows silently...the filter can only deal with so much at a time...

After a very long evening and a morning to finish off I have a great harvest.  Interestingly 2 very different types coming off the hives this year. A very golden runny honey and a really dark (looks like treacle) dark honey.

Winter breakfasts are going to be tasty!!!

Lemon Honey curd

 I was really happy when Granny gave me this magazine...

As it had this recipe in it....

Even better I had all the ingredients...

so I launched straight into it....

Weighing 300g of honey and 125g of butter into a heatproof bowl, sitting the bowl on a pan of simmering water...

 

It all started to melt together quite nicely, so I added the zest and juice of 1 lemon...

 

 

Then came the wierd bit...gradually adding 3 lightly beaten eggs.  Each addition really did go quite gloopy and alien like as it joined the main mixture, but frequently stirring, as the instructions said, it gradually came together into a smooth thick paste...

 

 

It is ready when you can "draw your finger across the back of the spoon and it leaves a light line"

Then its time to strain the curd into warmed jars.  I was about dubious about the need to strain it as it looked pretty good to me, it did seem rather a bit too much fuss...

But as it dripped through into the jars...the "eggy strands" that were left behind looked distinctly unappetising ...

 

 

About the only  downside to this recipe is that you don't get much curd (recipe says it makes approx 450g) ...

and you do use rather a lot of honey...  but it us a good sign of a good afternoon's baking!

Harvest time...

Anyone asking me how much honey I've had this year is going to get a slightly odd answer.  This year my main crop harvest is slightly under 5'3"...

That 9 supers, averaging 30llbs each, is about 270 llbs.

Anyone (mad) enough to be attempting to harvest that amount of honey in one day needs a plan of action...

Starting above with dust sheets to protect the kitchen floor and also a tank to settle the harvest in, a couple of trays to uncap the frames in, the extractor and plenty of buckets...

 

 




Now the latest word from local beekeepers who have already harvested this year is that the honey looks particularly dark and thick this year.  My bees seem to have fed on the same forage as everyone else's as it was very slow to drain out of the extractor....

 

So I resorted to tipping it forward after each batch of frames, this was my view for much of the afternoon...

I figured out pretty quickly that if I filled the filter to the top...

... it would have drained through by the time the next batch of frames had stopped spinning...

So by the time I was half way through...

 

I was truly multi-tasking...

Uncapping..

 

loading the extractor...

Draining and filtering...

 

And filling buckets...

and after about 10 hours ( I did stop for a bit of lunch & tea) I was finally down to the last few frames... 

But I do have something worthwhile to show for my efforts...

I'd better order some jars now...