Honest Fare

It was an eventful weekend. Finally got the new camera I’ve been reluctantly convincing myself I deserve. Drank quite a bit of wine in celebration of a friend’s birthday. Nearly drowned myself trying to pull some kind of thoughtless stunt in a kiddy pool (believe it or not, completely unrelated to the wine). And then there were the bees…

But before we get into the story of the bees/honey, some background to help you understand the depth and origins of my love for honey.

We didn’t keep many sweets around the house when I was growing up, but we did always have honey. And because of my mother’s inclination for things like wheat germ (which she forced upon me), plain yogurt and pretty much everything that would repel a young child, the kindness of honey was a lifesaver for me. My equivalent of a spoon full of sugar. I remember climbing on top of the kitchen counter to reach for the honey bear that lived next to my mom’s stash of teas and then returning to the table to COVER my breakfast in it.

My love for honey has only grown over the years, and though today I’ve come to appreciate the aforementioned yogurt and fiber products, I still drizzle honey all over them.

So this weekend. My friend Chase was clearing out an area in his backyard to make room for a big home renovation – a skateboard mini ramp (complete with a launch off into the pool). Crazy, I know. Anyway, “the bees” have been a menace to anyone who goes near the back shed for some time now. And this weekend, after a couple years of shooing and making quick breaks for the door when they weren’t around, the bees finally had to be addressed before the shed could be demolished and the area cleared out.

The ordeal begins. Assuming he would just investigate first (honestly, I have no idea WHAT he was thinking at this point), adventure seeker and videographer/photographer extraordinaire, Chase, approaches the bee zone wearing a snorkel mask, hoodie, scarf and zip lock bags on his hands for protection. He jacks open the wall to face off with thousands of bees.

Pressed for time, in the moment and without considering the alternatives for safe bee removal, he proceeds. Chase, you are braver than I. Long story short, between then and the time I showed up and was presented with a very large and somewhat mangled honeycomb, there was apparently quite a bit of smoke (to calm the bees) and destruction and grown men yelping and squealing like little girls.

Here’s the live version of how THAT went down…

As much as I think this video is hilarious and incredible on so many levels, let’s stop here to address the obvious. Displaced bees. Destroyed honeycomb. This kind of sucks. We’re all probably aware of reality of colony collapse syndrome and the crucial role bees play in our environment for pollination, etc. We need them. For more than honey. And worker bees and their queen are very much hardwired to a specific location. I felt (and still do feel) a real sadness for their removal. Actually, a bunch of us kind of got on Chase’s case for not calling out a professional to relocate them with a hive box. But by then it was too late. The damage had been done—the wall pulled open and the honeycombs dismounted.

The GOOD news is that the following day all the bees (including the queen!) flew off together in a giant cloud. Those who witnessed it said it sounded like a World Cup game. So since they left with the queen bee, we can only hope they colonized elsewhere. A lesson learned for the future and an experience for all those involved.

Staring in complete bug-eyed awe of the beauty and intricacies of their honeycomb, I kept wondering how long it must have taken them to build it. A crumbling bee condo. Ugh, what a waste. And then one taste of the pure honey spilling out the side of it and I was hit with the proverbial silver lining—the honey. Let there be honey! Wait…how?

How exactly does one remove the honey from a honeycomb…more specifically a severely broken and only partially filled honeycomb? Most of what I read online referred to intact or framed honeycombs (those would be the kind beekeeper’s have). The one I had was in pieces. And it wasn’t all filled with honey either. A lot of the tubes were filled with pollen, empty or actually had larvae in them (those I set aside for later burial). There was a lot of talk online about using a special honeycomb spinner, which basically spins the honeycomb in a giant vessel and shoots out the honey using centrifugal force (that’s how it’s done commercially). But I didn’t happen to have one of those handy. I though about tying a salad spinner, but I don’t have one of those either and I kept envisioning the result being my kitchen walls splattered with honey and sticky cabinet doors forever. I also read about people compressing the comb against a screen and letting the honey drain out into a pot. (Some even suggested using a potato masher, which just sounds brutal!)

What I ended up doing was a combination of a couple of the techniques I read about online: heat, gravity and compression.

The honeycomb had been sitting in a bowl in the refrigerator for almost 2 days prior to my getting it so some honey had already begun collecting at the bottom of the bowl it was in.

I let it keep doing that for a while. Then I heated the honeycomb lightly with a heat gun because I figured it would help things run more smoothly and might simulate a hot summer’s day. I inspected each tube and removed any sections that looked suspect.

In the end, this is what I came up with: A giant pot with a cheesecloth draped across it and a metal strainer fixed to the top.

I pressed the pieces of warm honeycomb against the strainer using a wooden spoon. After passing through the strainer, the honey was and additionally filtered through the cheesecloth below and then collected in the pot…drip by drip.

After a couple hours of this, my strainer was totally clogged solid with wax so I modified the procedure by just compressing the honeycomb in the cheesecloth (like a piece of mozzarella). It worked well, but was SO messy.

Luckily, Maya was there for cleanup duty.

Honey and pollen was all over the table and the house reeked of sweetness. When as much honey was removed as possible, I strained the collected amount through cheesecloth again several times to remove any wax.

It was pretty labor intensive and I was ready to hose myself off and take a nap about half way through. But I just kept licking my fingers for energy ;) and thinking about how I didn’t want to waste the bees’ delicious honey.

The final product is not as transparent as commercial honey because I’m sure I got a ton of the pollen mixed in there. But bee pollen is supposed to be good for you right?

It’s great! It tastes like…um, honey. I think it’s more floral than most and the pollen is definitely present, but I kind of enjoy that. Let’s just say it tastes unlike any honey I’ve ever had from the old honey bear.