Whoops, man.., dadgumit! Honey I spilt the honey :(

Some day's things just don't work out.  I had started off on Wednesday getting ready to pull honey on Thursday, set all my equipment up and spent time figuring out my best route to minimize steps in the process of my extracting the honey. I know it doesn't sound like a hard task, but when it comes to dealing with about 40 lb. honey supers and when you have your elbows full of cortisone just to be able to use them and have had two rotator cuff surgeries, you start to take every short cut you can to make the job a little easier. Thursday was hot and I got started a little late but endeavored in my task anyway: that was my first mistake. The supers came off fine with no problems and minimal stings. In Florida I wear as little bee protection clothing as possible when extracting or checking hives. My dad always said if your gonna be dumb you gotta be tough; besides, I only have 13 hives which makes it a little different than the big boys.

Everything went fine until late Thursday afternoon when, on my final task, I made the fatal mistake of trying to lift my extractor by myself. My wife was feeding the chickens and ducks, and I only needed to set it back on the stand. The next thing I knew--whoops, man..dadgumit! In that instant I watched about 60 lbs. of honey go from a bucket to the floor. Tipping the bucket back upright, I had to sit there a moment and think about what had happened and how to react.

A lot of questions and thoughts raced though my mind in that long moment, and in the end the scripture, "In every thing give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you," came to mind. Not that I was happy about dropping the bucket, but I also had the thought of when I came out of my coma and I couldn't walk, and how lost and dispirited I felt for any semblance of normalcy. I am so thankful for my life, my son, my Savior, and my bee's. It put my thoughts in perspective.

Hey honey, the honey is ready!

 There is much more to beekeeping than sitting in the shade watching the bee's fly back although that is one of my favorite part's. They are diligent in there work to produce the bounty that we anticipate with such eagerness. Our first year we purchased two hive bodies and a used but well kept honey supper's from a local bee keeper in our area. We had tried to read and learn all we could about bee's.
At that time we were on a one year plan, basically it detailed keeping the bee's alive. That year we seemed to have everything fall in place as the season's changed it was like opening a book we were able to see the season change from month as the bee's worked on the variety of pollens, and nectar they brought into the hive. We did not have a means of extraction so crush and strain would be our only option. At that were not ready or afford to make the investment of an extractor especially not knowing what the future held for our new endeavor. We did have a great year and made plenty of honey, I think we ended up with six honey supers by harvest time.
The second year winter was hard and long but we were still blessed with being able to add two more hive's and also making a successful split. That year I was able to borrow an extractor from a friend who had also recently started keeping bee's. This was a blessing because crush and strain is not only physically tiring the bee's do have to rebuild the all comb. My plan by now was to try and make it one more year without an extractor if possible and be able to have a better understanding of my goals and capabilities by my fourth year. My wife is my best and most helpful adviser as she keep's me grounded as far as my capabilities and disabilities, with my handicap I have a tendency to go overboard with most of my decisions and have tried to learn that I cant always trust my self in all the decisions I make. So far this year has started off great I did purchase five new queen's from Miksa Honey Farms in the past I had purchased nucs from Indian summer Honey Farms in Webster Fl they have Carniolan Cross queens and take their bee's to Michigan during summer for pollinating apple orchards. Although I have been very pleased with Indian Summer I thought a would try a native bee may more adapted to the summer heat in my area. I contacted Miksa Honey Farm's and picked up five Italian queen's. The new bee's quickly began to flourish and I ended up with making an additional seven splits. My inalienability to use numbers and problems with memory left me with colors white first year, green second, and yellow third, works for me.

My son, eat thou honey, because it is good; and the honeycomb, sweet to thy taste:
Proverbs 24:13