Final display at the Folk School

At the end of the weekend we had visited beehives both at the Folk School and at one of our teacher's nearby bee yards. We had taken apart hives, cleaned equipment, extracted honey and made candles and other items from beeswax.

On the table you can see the candles we made, the bags of pollen we collected, the honey we extracted. We also made some beeswax ornaments and a couple of wax bowls. Mine is the large one on on top of the miniature hive.

The honey extraction was quite an adventure. First we used a hot knife to cut the capping off of the honey. We put the frames of honey two at a time in the extractor and spun it around and around, slinging honey out of the frames via centrifugal force. Then we filtered the honey through two fine mesh filters into a plastic container with a spigot on it. Finally we filled the honey jars.

Kelly, another class member, and I then squeezed the cappings in our hands to extract the last of the honey - that was a messy job, but when we were finished, we got to taste the honey on our fingers!

On Sunday morning the people staying at the Folk School all had French toast with our extracted honey for their breakfast!