GLORY BEE!

Have you ever savored a smidgen of fresh raw scrumptious  honey?  You have not lived until you do. It is as it sounds....divine! With the question asked, I will now unfold to your understanding the marvelous excursion we made to the "local" bee farm only a couple hours away.  We were all excited and if I may say a bit nervous.  Being in close proximity with swarms of bees did not seem to be the most relaxing of activities.  However, with high hopes and and of course a little wad of cash we made our way to the M.V.T. Bee Farm.

We pulled up and met the head hancho, who was knowledgable and friendly.  Since, he did not know English it was good we had Mani and another FFC staff with us who could translate.  He led us to his hives and as we went I was looking at something else when all of a sudden there I was, shoulder to shoulder with a hive, looking down at the opening, teeming with Italian honey bees.  Surprisingly, it did not bother me in the least, and I could tell that Katie and the others were at ease as well. In fact there reigned a very pleasant feeling about the whole trip.  It was wonderful to be around these inspiring industrious productive creations of God.  His boxes were small because there are few flowers blooming at the moment, which caused him to also feed his bees, but instead giving sugar water he used sugar cane.  I liked the more natural way.    

He opened a couple of boxes and in one of them he showed us the queen who very shy and kept hiding from our curious gaze.  We also saw all the useless drones and busy workers working tirelessly.  It was funny and sad that one roly-poly drone, who was bored I guess, flew out of the box. I did not see or notice until he tired to come back.  Our host had already placed the queen excluder screen on top.  We was so fat that he could not pass through the screen so he went to the door.  In this picture he is stuck in the opening.  He could not get through no matter how hard he tried.  When he finally escaped from his tight situation he started flying around the box and I eventually lost track of him.  Never get so fat that you cannot pass through your own door. 

Not only did we enjoy the company of the bees, and  by the way no one was stung, but we sampled the honey and toured around his place.  There was a lot to see and learn.

He also makes his own boxes and equipment which we uses and sells. Like this nifty smoker. If you think only humans have problem with smoking try being a bee for a while.  Ignorant honey fans, like us, that desire to start their own hive of honey makers, can buy everything necessary from him.  (Remember that for future reference).  

Remember that little wad of money, well it sure came in handy.  We bought a few pounds of precious raw honey.  However, the honey is much sweeter and runnier than the honey we buy at home. To say the least we were overly hyper-excited to have something to sweeten our lives again.

Precious as this honey may be, it is imperative to separate the honey for the comb.  (To tell the truth this really is necessary, for though the honey is sweeter here, the comb is painfully bland and unpleasant to swallow). That is where this machine comes in handy.  Using the centrifugal force created by the manual power of the hand and arm and enhanced by a simple gear system, the honey is easily extracted and collected.  

But here let me introduce the real honey extractor.  I thrilled over every opportunity he gave us to sample the delectable honey.  Once he let us eat from the comb he pulled from the hive. Again from an old frame in storage that still had remnants of honey in it. Then, at the end he graciously blessed us with several pieces of honeycomb saturated with beautiful rich honey. You could say Katie, Mani, and I were in heaven coming home.  We all have that good feeling (really good feeling) and I am pretty confident in saying that we will proceed to do our own bee hive.  The moral of the experience is when you feel good inside, right about where your stomach is, than that must be the right thing to do.  I could leave it at that, but I think it would be better to say; Good things never come free, we must work for them.  Just like the lazy drone met his fate, and we got the blessings of all the hard work of ours, and theirs!

This is David your Post Host...so "bee" alert for my next post, because you never know when I will post again.