Oaks Honey

My father-in-law is a bee keeper. It's a hobby, not a job. It's really interesting to see him extract the honey from the hives. We got to watch him last night.

First he brings the boxes home from the field.



Then, he takes the hives out of the boxes.



Next, he scrapes the excess off the sides so that the hive (is that the right word) will fit into a machine. The machine spins the hives around to remove all the honey. The excess (what you see below) is seperated from the wax a different way. It is double boiled. The wax floats to the top and the honey sinks to the bottom.



This first filter still isn't pure, so it will go through another filtering process next to makes sure it's nice and pure. Last, the honey is bottled and ready to sell. Kind of fun, although I think I'm way too lazy for a hobby like this. Too much work for me :)



Just for fun, my father-in-law let the kids play with the smoker. He uses the smoker to chase the bees away when he is working on or gathering the boxes out in the field. It was fun playing with the smoker but IT STINKS!!! Jill will agree I'm sure. She went out to dinner with her hubby and came back to four stinky smoke infested children.