Crushing with Bear's Amazing Honey Crusher

This weekend Jeff, my son-in-law, and I harvested honey.  I've been not as active with my beekeeping because I am wearing an air-cast on my right leg.  I tore a ligament at Christmas and it hasn't gotten better so I have to do this for at least a month to allow the ligament to heal.  So I was grateful for his help.

First we went to the Morningside garden hives.  These were the latest installations we made this year and they do not have any honey to harvest, but to get to the hives I have to climb straight up a hill and I knew I would need Jeff's help to do anything with these hives.  I haven't looked at them in a month.  They are on a hill covered with kudzu.  Kudzu can grow one whole foot overnight.  It's known as the vine that ate the south and our beehives are no exception.

The entrances to both hives were covered with kudzu.  The bees were flying in and out just fine, but seemed grateful that we unearthed their entrances.  We tugged and cut the kudzu.  We also left a jar of water on each hive in a Boardman feeder.  Both hives were doing well but only had enough honey for themselves so we patted them on the top cover, frowned at the kudzu to encourage it to stay away, and left the hives for another day.

At my house we only harvested from Sebastian's hive.  We have at least two other hives with lots of honey to harvest, but we stuck to just this one.  We took two full boxes of honey off of this hive.  We crushed and strained the honey with Bear's wonderful present.  It is so mammoth that it is the Paul Bunyan of crushers.

Jeff wielded it first.  You can see in the photo that it crushes much more real estate than any other pestle we have.  What a wonderful gift!  Thank you so much, Bear.

Then I took a turn - great fun to crush with this southern pecan crusher.

We will harvest the rest soon, but it was fun to get a start on the season.

Amazing Gift for My Crush and Strain Honey

My friend, Bear Kelley, president of the Georgia Beekeepers Association, made me a gift.    I was talking to him about the difficulty of getting an effective pestle for crush and strain honey.  I have been using the same two since I began and they are small with the then requirement of lots of crushing.

I told him that when I was at the Chimneyville Crafts Fair in Jackson, Mississippi in December, I had asked a Mississippi craftsman to make one for me.  That one had a larger surface area but the handle had a pointed tip and over time, really hurt my hand.

Bear came to the rescue and made me a gorgeous honey crusher.  He hand-turned it out of southern pecan - more fitting than he knew because the southern pecan has had quite a role in my life.  My parents lived on land with giant southern pecan trees.  I remember feeling frightened as I watched the tall trees bend and parts of them break off in the hurricanes that came up the river from New Orleans to my hometown of Natchez.

Then when I was a senior, I asked my father if I could buy a class ring.  He said a class ring was a complete waste of money and if I wanted one, I'd have to earn the $50 that it cost by myself.  So I picked up pecans under those trees on our land and sold them to a pecan packing plant.  I quickly learned that I could make more money if I sold them shelled, so I became an expert at getting the shells and the bitter interior lining off of the meat of the pecan.  I earned my $50 and got my class ring - and as my father predicted - never wore it.

So southern pecan is a part of my history and actually represents hard work to me, so it is fitting that Bear's honey crusher is made of pecan and I will be using it to work to get the honey out of the honey comb.

Before he gave it to me, he entered it in a honey contest where he won a blue ribbon for his efforts.
After the contest, he branded it with his name Bear in the top of the handle.

Thanks, Bear - I'm SO EXCITED to have this lovely piece and to get to use it.