Sweet Harvest

I entered the Bienenhaus on a cool Monday afternoon and breathed in deep of that exquisite smell: the sweet scents of wax and honey mixed with the comfortable mustiness that one finds in old houses and yellowed books, with just a whiff of the golden forsythia that bloom in exuberant explosions around the entrance. That smell, golden-brown, warm even in the dead of winter, and delightfully sweet, seems to promise sunshine no matter what the season or weather, but now it's especially apt: we're harvesting honey.

Inside the long-unused honey room, the Schleuder (centrifuge, for lack of a better word) was vibrating noisily. It looked like an enormous tin can, squatting on three slender legs, its spinning contents a blur under its plexiglass lid. But out of a faucet at the base ran a steady stream of golden honey through two sieves into a yellow bucket proudly marked ECHTER DEUTSCHER HONIG (Real German Honey).

The harvesting process begins outside, of course, at the Bienenstand. Several weeks ago, the hives were each given an extra Honigraum (a Zarge, or level, filled with empty honeycombs) separated from the rest of the hive by an Absperrgitter. This is a grating through which the smaller worker bees can crawl, but which is too narrow for the larger queen; this prevents the queen from laying eggs in the honey room. The beekeepers outside look through the hives, making sure the queen is in good health by either spotting Her Highness or by finding Stifte, tiny white newly-laid eggs. From the Honigraum they take out the Waben (honeycombs) that are full of honey and bring them to us in the Schleuderraum.

The bees let the honey air until the right amount of water has evaporated--about 18% is right--and then they cover the honey cells with a thin layer of wax. Our first job is to take off this covering with a special fork. We set aside the uncovered honeycombs to wait to be spun. As they sit in a rack, the honey drips down the open combs like syrupy raindrops; you can catch the drops on your finger and taste right away. Honey doesn't get any fresher than this.

Once there's room in the Schleuder, four honeycombs are loaded into spring-cushioned cages in the centrifuge's silver belly. A tiny white motor at the top spins the combs, extracting the precious honey and doing minimal damage to the combs themselves. Ideally all the honey is removed, and apart from a few tears and smushes, the combs are perfectly fine and can be replaced directly back into the hives for the bees to repair and fill again with honey.

One honeycomb contained a few wax-covered brood cells. As I leaned in to look, I noticed that one of the cells was missing its cover and instead, the triangular head and waving antennae of a hatching young worker bee were visible. I set that comb aside and waited, and in a few minutes, the young worker reached out of her confining cell with dainty black legs and pulled herself free: first head, then the thorax covered in downy silvery-tan hair and adorned with delicate wings, then the long abdomen striped in black and dark gold. We took her outside, and hopefully she found her way to her own or another hive. We spun that comb anyway with the rest of the brood still inside; we'll see if any of the rest survived.

We worked for about three and a half hours and produced more than six buckets of honey. I even took a jar of it home. This is how every Bienenkunde will be spent for a while: the bees will work hard to stock up with honey for the winter, we'll steal it away and give them the empty combs back to fill for us to steal again. There are some concerns that the hot, dry weather we've been having means the bees will run out of pollen, which is one of the ingredients of honey...but that remains to be seen.