Reader, as you may know, I spend a good deal of my time these days removing bees from houses. I usually schedule only one of these removals each week because it seems to take me a week to deal with all the attending ramifications:

• return to the home at night or unbelievably early in the morning to remove the bees
• invest some time in customer and community relations regarding a general uneasiness about all the bees still flying around (really, the site of these removals draws quite a crowd of neighbors)
• vacuum the bees that clustered overnight at their old entry site
• situate the bees in one of my beeyards,
• clean EVERYTHING of honey
• crush the honey-containing comb and filter the fresh, warm honey
• clean EVERYTHING of honey
• rinse the wax from which the honey dripped
• render pure and glorious-smelling beeswax from all the comb we remove from the home…including the wax from which the honey dripped
• clean EVERYTHING of honey
• unpack my car
• clean all the equipment of honey
• haul all that stuff to the basement
• clean my car of honey and bees
• wash honey from all the clothes and bee suits
• pack it all nicely honey-free for the next removal

All of this is to say that I’ve had less time these past weeks to enjoy my visits to my other beeyards. And here we are at the time of year when we harvest the spring honey.

I harvested some early capped frames from three beeyards…I sort of like doing this in stages as the summer progresses rather than doing it all at once. I invite you over to Amy’s blog to see some pictures of and to read about our first honey harvest.

I’ll tell you that I seldom suit all the way up, but when you rummage through a hive in order to rob it of its stores, the bees are not at all pleased.