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Chances are pretty good that if you take the top off a beehive youre going to get stung. Mern Palmer-Smith takes precautions. I go out completely protected. I dont particularly enjoy getting stung, she says. And she always has her smoker with her, ready for action. You have to realize that its dark in the hive, she says. Suddenly taking the roof off the bees home and blinding them with daylight makes them very agitated. The thought behind the smoke is that it distracts them and their first priority is to protect the honey and their queen, which are deeper in the hive, she says.
Mern has just finished harvesting the two hives in her Wilton garden. She takes the honey twice a year, in late spring and in October, and reckons on getting at least 70 pounds of the liquid gold every year. Exactly how much depends on the weather and on having a full hive of bees. I lost part of a hive to a swarm this year, she says, and I wasnt able to get them back.
Getting at the honey takes some work. With the roof off and the majority of the bees deep in the hive, the first job is to remove the super, also called the shallows, from the top. If its full of honey it will weigh about 40 pounds. The queen bee, who spends her life laying eggs, lives down in the deeps, surrounded by worker bees who are busy filling cells with honey. When the deeps are full, the bees fill the shallows with more honey. Thats the honey for us, says Mern, though the bees arent too keen on parting with it.
Trailing bees, Mern takes the heavy super/shallows indoors and slices off the thin wax layer covering the cells using a heated knife. The tray goes into a centrifuge, the honey is slowly spun out then filtered through cheesecloth into a large bin with a spigot at the bottom. The honey is ready for bottling. My son, Austin, is helping me design my own label this year, she says. Mern sells the honey at her store in Darien.
What happens to the hives in the winter when its cold? The bees keep the hive very warm, says Mern. I love to walk through the snow and put my head to the side of the hive and listen to them buzzing. Its beautiful.
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