The Bee Hive

 There has been a bee hive under this house for many years. When we lived here 16 years ago, it was already well established. We tried to kill the bees off but they kept coming back.

The place where they were coming in and out of the hive was next to one of the paths that leads to the back of the house where the different meters are. I've been worried about the guys who have to go down there. Also Christopher had a very bad reaction to bee stings when he was little, he might have out grown it but it's a risk.

Yesterday morning I showed a home page to David of a company that deals with these types of insects, there are a lot in Japan. Even cute caterpillars have a deadly sting, speaking from experience here!  The company looked good but even just the basic price was 10,000 yen (about 50 pounds) if there were any problems it could get very expensive!

David decided to open up one of the tatamis to see what the hive looked like. We had noticed that there was no activity at all, either they had died because of the sudden cold snap the other week or they were hibernating.

David was surprised at the size of the hive.

massive hive

He tried to pull it away from the floor beams, it came away it pieces but also a load of honey started to drip from it. Of course David had to taste it!

As he pulled away more and more he was shocked at the beauty of the structure inside.

Really beautiful

He managed to get it out. There's so much honey in there. Also we found a few bees that were hibernating. 

Bees in the hive

So now we have a dilemma. 

We want to harvest the honey but save the bees. But I don't want the bees near the house!  After checking on line to see if it would be possible to process the honey we divided the hive. The pieces with the honey we kept here, the other part David took to some of our land that has a lot of weeds, especially those that bloom early. I hope that the bees survive!

This what we were left with!

Lots of honeycombs!

To get the honey it is basically a process of straining it through sieves, until the comb has been removed. The last straining is through cheese cloth. 

So all day yesterday and today I've been processing honey. It's fun and rather interesting to do, but very sticky. I thought about using it as is but after reading more on line I've decided to pasteurize it. We've used a bit already in tea and coffee but just be safe I think that the pasteurization method is best.

mashing the honey comb

honey before pasteurizing

When I was told that we had to leave the other house and move here I thought about growing vegetables, maybe getting a few chickens for eggs (not happening as they stink!), pottering around in the garden. Never in my wildest dreams did I think that I would be processing honey!!  I guess this is part of  the adventure that is life.