Bee Keeping... AK Style

Here are 10 steps from a novice bee keeper on how to harvest honey in Alaska:

Step #1: Ship a coveted Queen Bee and thousands of her attendants up from a farm in the Pacific Northwest.

Step #2: Supply a 'bee'fitting home for the Queen and sit back and enjoy the beautiful summer while her crew goes to work. The Queen will lay her eggs, the lady worker bees will pollinate flowers, collect nectar, attend to the young, protect the hive, and produce honey. Meanwhile the male drones will sit around sipping nectar and eating honey in the hive. Dad and Stan soaking up the view. Luckily these "drones" aren't so lazy-- they just finished eradicating a hornets nest from the back yard.

Step #3: Dress to impress. Tyvex suits, Extra Tuff boots, hefty gloves, and a head net. A ball cap covered with a mosquito net that's duct-taped to the suit works just great. BEE-ware: Carry an Epi Pen if you're allergic (like Rosa, my Dad, and me) and make sure a bee can't climb in your net... causing another unexpected ambulance ride to the ER.
Two Queen bees and their apprentice --aka Rosa, Mom, and me.

Step #4: Pick a sunny day to raid the honey that the bees have been busy gathering all summer long. We keep the hive behind the electric garden fence and inside a bear resistant dog-kennel cage because last year a black bear got into the hive before we did!Step #5: Find a powerful vacuum cleaner and suck them up so that you can put the bee-free honey filled comb into a container to work with later. Try not to feel bad for the little guys and realize that over-wintering the hives in Alaska is neither cost-effective or practical for our mini operation just yet. Don't worry if people walking by give you an odd look.Step #6: Donate the fragrant and bee-eautiful medley of carcasses back to the Earth by dumping them into the compost pile. Cover to avoid attracting animals.
Step #7: Comb out the honey into a gigantic centrifuge container. Spin all the honey you can get out of each side.

Step #8: Drain the honey into jars and filter the comb honey out by pouring it over panty-hose.

Step #9: Save and re-use the honey comb so next years bees can spend less energy creating honey comb and more energy toward pollinating flowers and thus creating a greater amount of honey.

Step #10: Enjoy the smoothest, richest, creamiest honey you have ever tasted!