Another Sweet Success...Honey

Last year I invested in two beehives. I bounced the idea off a friend who decided to as well. What fun it would be to harvest our own "liquid gold" . What wonders the bees would do for our gardens.  We  researched and taught each other as we went along hoping to gain the credibility of being called "beekeeper" someday. Neither of us gained any honey our first year but learned a little by experience how to care for these amazing creatures. My sister gave me the delightful book " The Life of the Bee" by Maurice Maeterlinck which I highly recommend. My friend attended the local beekeepers meeting and told me what she learned about recognizing the drone, brood and queen cells. We found that the hives really don't require a lot of work, just periodic checking once or twice a month. The bees of course do the real work.  This past week, I donned my bee suit and decided to see if  some extra honey was there for me. The bees need to keep quite a bit for their winter food. I was happily surprised to find seven frames with capped honey ready for me!  This got my husband excited and he helped me with the extraction. We added nearly 20 lbs of delicious honey to our pantry.  What a thrilling sweet success and I now proudly call myself a beekeeper!