"Sweet" Saturday

Mike needed some beeswax to make a new batch of MH hippie salve*. He met a bee man at a craft show selling his honey and got to talking to him. The man offered a tour of his operation and said he always had some extra beeswax. We made the trip to the bee place on a Saturday and had a hands on tour of honey production. The operation was very low key. His wife came out of their house and offered her grandkids' toys for the girls to play with. We were going to leave Jake in the back of the truck, but she offered him a spot in the shade on the deck. So, Katelyn and Jake spent all of their time on the deck, even taking a few cat naps together during the afternoon. The bee man taught us all about bees and honey. He let us scrape the wax off the screens from the bee boxes to "break the seal" of the wax. We then put the screens into a centrifuge which separated the honey from the remaining wax. The honey poured from a spout at the bottom of the centrifuge into a five gallon bucket. He poured the honey from the five gallon bucket and strained it a few more times to clean out any remaining wax. He put Nancy and Mike in bee suits and took them out to the bee box in his yard and taught them some more about the bee operation. Kyleigh and the bee man's granddaughter hung out together and even got to make bee wax candles. We all got to taste pure honey straight from the bee boxes. You had to suck the honey off the wax and throw the wax into a waste bucket. I have to admit that I wasn't excited about the bee tour. After all, Rusty carries an epi pen and Mike, who is a little less allergic, carries the pills for bee stings. Anyone who knows Mike and Rusty know that you can't change their minds once they are made up. They were determined to visit the bee man. Thankfully, it turned out O.K. and we learned a lot.

* MH hippie salve is an herbal remedy for topical ailments that Mike and Holly concocted when Katelyn started having bad reactions to bug bites. It is pretty much the best stuff on the planet.