One of the key elements on the farm (at least during the summer) is bee-keeping. Bees are an important and useful part of the permaculture farm environment in terms of the pollination they provide. But they also make a heck of a lot of honey!

I was lucky enough to get to assist Jorge with the honey harvesting on one of the days, along with Clayton and Ian (both from the US). We all donned masks and gloves. There weren’t enough suits to go around so that’s all I got but the other two had a bit more protection.

Ian and Clayton think about starting a new band

The work involved opening up the hive boxes in turn and dousing the bees with some smoke to make them a bit more docile before taking out the racks of wax that were ready to be harvested (had lots of honey on them). The bees were gently swept off the rack with a brush and the rack was transferred to another box for transporting to the next stage. Fresh racks were put into the box to replace the ones taken out as required. The box lid was then replaced and we moved on to the next box.

Once we had a stack of about 5 boxes (each with about 10 honey-laden racks) we wrapped the stack in cling-film to keep the workaholic bees out.

Every so often an excess chunk of honeycomb would need to be removed. Jorge cheerfully showed us how to just suck on it through the mesh on your face mask to eat the pure oosing honey within it. Absolutely amazing – one of the coolest things I’ve done ever!

Suprisingly I only got one sting all day – and it only stung for about 5 minutes.

In the evening, in a dimly-lit tarpaulin-wrapped shed in the middle of a field, feeling slightly like Walter White, we started the next stage. The outer wax on each rack was scraped to expose the honey a bit. Racks were then loaded into the centrifuge – basically a large steel cylinder with a hole at the bottom, spun at about 110Hz by a motor. The racks are spun for about 20 minutes. During this time the honey is drained off into a bucket through a hole at the bottom and then the bucket is poured into a huge barrel. By the time we finished at about 10pm we’d filled a barrel and a half with the honey we’d collected that day – each barrel sells for just under $1000 US.

I can only conclude that bees are astonishing, fantastic creatures that are so cool to work with. It was a real priviledge to help Jorge with his work and of course to sample the freshest, purest honey I’ve ever tasted!