After surviving our spring. Then surviving our honey harvest. We crashed. We crashed hard. We pretty much fell off the face of the earth for a week or more. We digressed into terrible, awful behavior. We actually became couch potatoes.
This is pretty funny for someone who only watches a couple hours of television a week. Really funny for someone who does not have cable TV or satellite TV.
Yes.
You read that right.
I am pretty sure we are the only family I know of that exists with a regular, old time, television antennae. Most people are horrified when I tell them this, but for us it works out great. I'm too busy for television. The girls were always pretty busy. The Man in Charge decompresses from his day by playing video games, and as long as he can watch football, he's good.
How does one become a couch potato without cable, you ask?
Easy.
Netflix.
In a matter of about twelve days, we watched...
House of Cards - 2 seasons
Downton Abbey - 4 seasons
Breaking Bad - ALL 5 seasons
Do you know how many hours of television that is?
Over 100 hours!
It was crazy!
We were getting up early and staying up late. The only requirement was that everyone was fed. There was no cleaning. No real cooking. Falling in love with takeout. No laundry. No hair. No make-up. No socializing. Nothing. Nada. Zilch. We were camped out in the study with three dogs and endless snack foods. We basically fell off the map, and we were very okay with that.
But the rain kept falling, the flowers kept blooming, and the bees kept working.
Normally, in the great State of Texas, we only harvest honey one time during the year. This usually falls in the middle of July. As you read, we had a pretty nice harvest. The honey was awesome and the yield was plentiful. In between episodes of weird, random television shows, I did manage to check on the girls here and there. Seeing that they were still working hard, we decided to go back for a second harvest the beginning of August.
We scheduled the honey house and made a plan. My Full-timer was available and the Blue Dog Bee lady was willing to give us a hand. This time, we decided to pull our supers off the hives the night before our harvest date. I had scheduled the honey house for 9:00 am. So, we had to be on the road by 7:15 am.
I don't think I will ever do that again.
Pulling supers off of beehives in the evening hours is not pleasant. For one thing, the bees are all at home! They don't really like the experience, and they shared their discontent. We had to fight for every single box. The good news, I only expected to pull four to six supers, we pulled eleven. The more exciting part of the adventure happened at the honey house. We loaded the extractor and let it go to work. Then we opened the valve and got the shock of our life.
The second round of honey is dark. It has a complex, intense, honey flavor. Then, it finishes with the sweetest taste of molasses.
Same Bees.
Same location.
Different flowers.
Completely different honey.
I can tell you that the Indian Blanket was gone. The girls made this happen with everything that was left.
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