A Honey CSA

Bees are selfless and hardworking, they turn pollen into honey and wax, while pollinating 40% of the planet's food in the process. They are completely dedicated to the hive, feeding the queen, caring for the young and foraging for flowers, and will quickly give up their lives if they feel that their hive is threatened.
And yet, they are all threatened, and by extension, all the services they provide for us and all the creatures in the food web are also threatened. They simply are not finding our current agricultural system to be tolerable, the mass migrations that the factory bee keepers submit them to, the new and alarmingly potent pesticides, and the vast monocultures, have left them weak. And hosts of parasitic, bacterial and viral infections have found footholds. So, their populations are collapsing.
I've been aware of this phenomenon for several years (it is no secret, all the major news outlets have said something about it.) And so, I jumped at the chance to support a beekeeper who was trying to really keep the bees.

His name is Brian Campbell, of Blessed Bee Farm and on top of having an impressive resume of being a founding member of the Richmond Sharing Farm he is also a skilled and passionate bee keeper and teacher. He defines keeping bees ethically by not exposing the bees to chemicals and not force migrating them around the continent. Also, by making sure that the bees come first, by only harvesting the extra honey, so that they have enough honey to overwinter, so they won't need to be fed high fructose corn syrup, like, unfortunately, most honey bees are.
I got to cross paths with him through a Honey CSA that he offered in the spring.
CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture, and the idea is that emerging, small farmers reach out to the community for support in start up costs. So a consumer would purchase a share at the beginning of the season, and then get a percentage of the harvest when it comes in. It means that the consumer carries the risk (and it is a risk, my friend joined one, and then the farm was flooded, meaning she will only receive a fraction of what she was hoping for.) But, the farmer, or producer won't lose their shirt or farm if the year turns out to be terrible. This way we can continue to have small farms, and farmers can continue to stay in business while they partake in the learning curve required to transition to organic farming, or just farming in general, in the case of many young farmers.
I was very excited to join the Honey CSA, especially since I've been so interested/intimidated by beekeeping, and I knew one share included a hands on demonstration of the honey harvest.

The hives for the CSA were kept in a grove of Hazelnut trees, on the edge of Terra Nova, one of Richmond's sharing farms. It was amazing to open up the hives, though I was also very nervous. It was hot, and bees were buzzing around everywhere, it felt a little claustrophobic at times. Luckily, I did not get stung, but a few people did, and poor Brian got stung up his nose...

However, everyone was just entranced by the bees. The buzzing, the intoxicating smell of honey, and the intricate and precise shapes of their honey comb held us all transfixed. The image above is of a super, the bees have built their comb in the frame and have filled up mostly every cell with honey, so this super is very heavy.

The honey filled supers get removed from the hive, put into a sealed box and taken into a sealed room (the smell of their honey outside the hive will make the bees aggressive) where the harvest is to take place.
First the wax tops of every cell must be removed with a honey comb. It takes a lot of energy for bees to make wax, for every 8 ounces of honey a hive will produce only one ounce of wax, and the wax is very valuable to them for comb building, so we saved it and it was given back to the bees to use again.

Then, after the wax seals have been removed, the super is loaded into the extracting machine.

Once the extracting machine is fully loaded it get turns on, and it spins the supers around very fast. This spinning allows centrifugal force to remove the honey from every cell, splashing it on the inside of the walls, where it drips down to the bottom of the extractor, and pours out the spout.

The honey is mixed with wax fragments, so filtering it through cheese cloth is important.

Then it  is ready to be bottled. We had to wipe the lip of the jar, before putting the cap on, similar to when you are canning jam.

So lovely, unpasteurized honey, still warm from the hive. Mmmmm.

If you want to learn more about bees, please, do not hesitate. Watch the documentary Queen of the Sun a poetic, romantic, factual and riveting documentary, or read Keeping The Bees by Laurence Packer, a well written book that caters to those with scientific leanings, but is an entertaining read as well.

At the end of Queen of the Sun there are 6 things listed that we can all do to help out honey bees. I repeat them here because I think they are so important to know.

How To Help Honeybees

1. Grow flowers, plants and herbs to help provide food for bees.

2. Eliminate pesticides in your garden and lawn.

3. Bees are thirsty. Provide a continuous shallow basin with clean water in your garden.

4. Buy directly from a local beekeeper who avoids using chemicals and produces raw honey.

5. Eat organic and pesticide free food.

6. Become a Beekeeper with sustainable practices.