Beesiness...

So, a little while ago I briefly posted that we were harvesting honey.  First of all, we headed over to our friend's house to help them with their four hives.  Benjamin was taking the first set of pictures, so you won't see him until a little way down.  Overall, it was an exhausting experience, but very rewarding.  Hope the pictures give you a little glimpse into the whole process.

Here C is starting to smoke their first hive.  The smoke apparently makes the bees think there is a fire, so they want to save the honey - how do they do this?  They gorge themselves on it - this makes them a little 'drunk', but honestly, it doesn't make nearly enough of them more 'passive...'

Just want you to get a good look at how beautiful this honey is!  It is a lighter color than some because it was made by the bees more recently.  The longer the honey sits, the darker it gets.

 Yeah... hmmmm.... anyone want to play around these suckers without a suit???  I didn't think so!

Some of the honey and stuff that falls is left behind for the bees.  You want to leave a little bit on top for them  to build down from again, and you also want to make sure that your hive is staying healthy, so you don't take as much wax and honey as you can.

This picture below shows the hazards of the honey harvest.  There was a Tanzanian man working with C and Ben, but unfortunately, his hat did not zip to his suit - it was a draw string hat.  Can you see all of those bees clustered between his shoulders?  A number of them infiltrated through his hat and he got 5 stings on his face.  After this hive, he decided to be 'done' for the day and did not assist with the other 3.  He was medicated and sent home - and we saw him the next day - he seemed to be doing much better.

That night, the men processed some of the honey.  We ladies even got involved.  Due to some logistical issues (2 hives were on the top of the wall and the other one was on the top of the chicken coop roof), the men had a harder time with the other 3 hives.  It is hard to explain, but because of how they had to do some stuff, more bees ended up in the honey than normal.  The ladies joined in the processing process by using spoons to pick some of the bees out of the honey and off of the honey comb.  Then the men squeezed it and strained it.  We didn't get home that night until after 1 am.  Then we were back over around 10 am to finish up the processing process.  Don't you like those two words together???  :)  We were able to finish around 1 pm, so we had a nice lunch together, went home and rested for a bit, then all converged at our house to harvest our two hives.

The handsome men in their special suits... posing on the porch before heading out back to tackle our two hives.

While this was Ben's fourth time participating in the harvest, it was his first time being the one to open the hives and do more of the hands on harvesting

Good lookin' stuff right?

Hmmm... I think this picture ended up out of order.  Oh well... I will give you a little bit of Tanzanian trivia.  There are some Tanzanian tribes that make a habit of harvesting the wild honey.  They usually go in the middle of the night either wearing underwear... or nothing at all.  Why?  Because if you are wearing clothes and the bees fly/crawl into them, they WILL feel trapped and sting you, so less clothing = less possibility of getting stung... unless we are talking about a bee suit here...  And the bees are less active in the night time and with any cooler temperatures.

After harvesting the honey, we had dinner together, then the men went to work.  Thankfully, the honey was much less mangled and it was much easier to make it close to 'bee free'.  The ladies didn't actually have to do any work at all!  And we both agreed, we like that we can help, but bending over a bucket in the same position for 3 hrs the night before was more than enough!  Our necks and shoulders were complaining a bit.

This part of the process went sooooooooooooooo smoothly.  We were both surprised and thankful.

Here is the hubby showing off a container of honey he decided to keep in the comb.  It was all still quite nicely capped and somehow he enjoys eating wax...  Childhood memories or some such thing...

Here is a close up of the men squeezing the wax to release the delish honey.  They squeeze it into a strainer which then drains into a bucket.  Afterwards, the balls of wax that they have already squeezed are left to drain in another strainer.  Sometime in the future, the wax will be melted down, the impurities removed and it will be able to be used for other things.  We know someone here who makes candles and chapstick out of it.  Maybe one day we will do that, but I think for now, most of this wax will be used to bait hives for others who want to start keeping bees.

Well, in the end, our friends got over 26 litres (close to 7 gallons) of honey and we got somewhere around 12 (a little over 3 gallons).  While both men did get some stings, we are thankful for the Lord's protection over them during this process.  We are also excessively grateful for His abundant provision through His fascinating creation.