 Yeah, no, these are totally just laden with honey if you shake the bees over the hive It'll keep them from getting quite as irritated. No, we're getting a little pasture your height limit there But yeah, welcome to my world Hey Peter, what are you doing? Oh? Hey, Matthew just getting ready for business tonight kind of snipping some herbs and Getting into the day. Well, I know you have a couple things on your menu that have honey How would you like to go learn about robbing honey from beehives? You know, I've always wanted to do that and I think that'd be a fabulous idea. All right, let's go. All right Hey Peter, Jeremy Behmus. Yeah, good to see you man. Good to see you. You're helping us rob some honey bees today That's what they tell me. I was instructed to come out here and I'm looking forward to that I've always kind of been intrigued by this process. So I'm looking forward to learning about it. Well, good Do you like getting stung? I don't know. We guess we can find out. We will find out I think we're good to go. Can we put the hood up for the full effect? Yeah Okay, so we've got our tools here We've got a couple outer covers couple empty boxes. We've got some bee brushes and then a hive tool. All right So this is our smoker You can check bees and do all sorts of things But you're not gonna make it very far at all without a hive tool Normally the first question everybody asked is am I gonna get stung so the fact that he didn't ask that I thought he was actually kind of kind of ready to go with it So we just get a we're looking for a nice cool smoke Down in the bottom of the can. Okay, so the We squeeze this here blows the air into the bottom. All right, and we can just stuff This full as we can get it. All right So when you're lighting your smoker, you put your gloves on things like that and get your get your gloves smelling like smoke All right, I got you. Here we go. There you go smoke your gloves. I don't think I've ever said that before Um, so what we're gonna do is we're gonna go over to the hive. We're gonna crack it open Uh, we're gonna try to steal what honey we can and I always like to go in and do a hive check So we'll go in make sure the queen's doing well Everything looks good and then we'll close them all up and head to the next hive Look my dickies get a chance to use a hive tool pocket They've they've held many spatulas and quite a few tongs, but never a hive tool Only mildly concerned, you know, oh, there's nothing to be worried about. It just stings for a few minutes. All right, that's good. I'm okay I brought my epi pin. What the heck? All right, so we're doing this the Slow way. Okay, so there are a lot of different ways to do this um, so hopefully this will be a Not too terribly invasive for the bees. Hopefully they won't get too irritated with us Um, so the way we're gonna do it is we're gonna crack the top. We're gonna go frame by frame We'll pull it out. We'll check it if it's ready. Then we'll just take our brush We're gonna gently brush the bees back into the box. All right set the frame in here And then this is kind of our Our top to keep the bees from going back to the honey. I got you So you always want to work the hive from behind so as they come out They go into their flight path. They get up and they go off. So if you're actually looking the camera guy is awesome. Awesome Were you afraid of getting stung? Not really. I mean, you know, the equipment seemed good enough I mean, you know, I've seen uh, I've seen little old ladies be hiving before So, uh, I figured I should be as tough as them. Just probably not true. But nonetheless Um, so we're gonna blow just a little bit of smoke. Okay Um, we don't want to do too much if you get too much in there They think the forest is on fire and they need to go somewhere else. So that's gonna be counterproductive. All right So I'll take our hive tool I'm gonna crack it open. We're just gonna break it so you can use this part here. Okay, either way So you just pull it up So we get a look at it. So this is our capped honey So that's what we're looking for is we're wanting as much capped honey as we can get. All right Just kind of gently Knock them off. There's one with his head down her head in the cell So once it's off, we're gonna Brush it off onto me and then move along All right, that just keeps them out. So if you want to do one, I'll watch you. Oh, totally. Yeah. Okay. So here, wait That's okay. I travel with a beach. There you go. Thanks. So I'm gonna just break that up there Pull this up. Oh, it's heavy Yeah, a good full frame, which this is not super full. Um, they could weigh six seven pounds. Wow. Yeah No, no, no. Okay. So, uh, we're just gonna brush this off. We're watch putting your finger on the frame You'll poke a hole in it and then I'm dripping all over try to keep try to keep a hold of the ears. All right See you dude. You got to get your head out of there. Sorry going Oh little stick. Yeah, don't do that. That makes don't do that. Okay. All right I don't like banging and loud noises. Okay May I do another? Yep. We're gonna do the whole box here. So I'm gonna speed you up a little bit We're just gonna go through and just crack All these to break them free because it looks like the whole box is gonna come off Yeah, I mean there's that you know, this the sound of the buzzing is obviously kind of a hard wire noise that is a little bit Disconcerting That's the overall process so far You've got to keep an eye out for those little b-butts sticking out in the air. Do you like that right there? Yeah One more here. Come on dude I'm gonna So what we're gonna do is so this box is full. We're gonna take our brush. I got you get the bees out of this box So I'm gonna give us an empty box to set on top So a full medium honey super which is what these are Um, we'll weigh 55 pounds give or take. That's a lot of honey. So we'll see how many of these you can carry All right, so uh, can I do it? Can I do it? Can I do it? All right So we're just gonna do just two or three pups of smoke under the back I don't want to freak them out. So right right through that little gap right there So we run screen bottoms meaning the whole bottom of it is just a wire That's enough. So if you'll come just reach around to the front I'm gonna actually you got the short arms. It's a little a little longer reach for you You tall guys. We keep you around for certain reasons We're just gonna do a quick half check make sure everything looks good. It looks laden with bees I think it's a very important job though because it's dangerous if this could start a fire or something You know, they only give it to very capable people Is my take on it I'm gonna let you do this whole one by yourself because you got about 50 more to do after this one No, no, no, I gotta get it. I've got it. My honey harvesting muscles have atrophied. I must say All right, let me grab my handy dandy honey harvesting tool Is that okay? I mean just like that's okay to work. Yeah, you don't want to do tapping anymore. Okay. Okay I got you for the I got you to add you don't want to add the right idea guys. All right. I hear you All right, boys and girls girls and girls and a handful of loser guys Very cool. Just start from here and go over that way. Okay Actually, if you start on this side, work your way back your tool will you'll work backwards on the tool Oh, okay. There you go. Or that way. So It's up to you. Now it makes sense. I generally do things backwards Okay, let's say that's our nice. Yeah, now you can once again I mean you can tell right off the bat just with the weight of it If I only had a handy brush for a bees. Hello ladies Can I ask y'all to kindly go elsewhere? Yeah, no, these are totally just laden with honey If you shake the bees over the hive, it'll Keep them from getting quite as irritated. No, we're getting a little past your your height limit there, but you see Welcome to my world So now what so what were you suggesting there when I do this kind of do it over the hive? Yeah, because you'll knock the bees back down in okay, and that'll be less pissed about it Yeah, they're they're having to fly back into the hive. I got you So like I said we're a little high on this box here. Yeah, like I said easy for you to say All right ladies. Let's go back down in there There you go Bring my Sun steps tool out here for your thank you very much. Thank you very much. Um, that's why I hire Tall people at the restaurant get things off the top shelf How do you use honey in your restaurant? You know with it on anything. Oh absolutely one of my my You know, we do use local honey. I've got a trade-out that I use with an apiarist It is my chef's friend. And so yeah, we use it for all kinds of things a lot of dessert stuff Um, I use tons of it for a honey dill carrot, which is one of the vegetables we run at the restaurant I'll just blanch the carrots get them partially done. And then when we go to service we put the Honey, I mean uh some butter onions and honey in a skillet a little bit of dill weed and then just uh Heat them up that way and it's delicious Are you excited about uh, you know using honey and more dishes coming up about it, you know the process? Absolutely. Absolutely. We've had good relationships with local beekeepers for quite a few years now But to go ahead and have something like this only kind of reinforces Why I like to do that and how important it is for me to take advantage of that stuff I'm getting a little getting a little noise That one, what do you think boss? Well, you can probably take it. So again later in the season They don't tend to cap as much Sure Um, so that's borderline, but okay, we can we can pull one or two while we're pulling I mean once again this one looks I mean you can see the honey on this side Is it starting to be capped on the other side? They're working on it So there's an old wives tale for checking it and I can show you after you brush the bees off of it Baby. Oh, I'm sorry. Here you go So basically the the old timers theory Was you just take the honey and you give it a shake If nothing came out then the moisture content was low enough that it should be fine. Okay. I got you. So that's not 100 accurate, but All right now, we're just Absolutely very carefully pull that up because you don't want to roll the queen all right All right, so we got lots of brood right there Whoa All right, so this is capped brood. So again the queen lays the eggs So there's a pretty good chance. She's not going to be on this frame. So give it a flip just to see what we're going to leave it out Okay, so I don't see the queen anywhere. Are you going to leave it out? Okay We need one frame to work with okay, so watch watch the brick. We don't want to break the cells I got you. I got you. I just stand it up on its end. All right, then I usually look down in here So they're both open so we can go either way. We got a 50-50 shot of being right here. All right I'll take 50-50 So we're looking for young eggs young larva and then from there Hopefully we'll find the queen on that frame All right, we're just going to close them back up. They're getting they're getting a little agitated. We're We are at our time limit. All right, which is okay. We've seen what we need to see for the for the bees All right How's the easy part going straight to the water? It's nice to go to go in reverse order Put the top down. All right, shoot bees. Shoot All right, looks like they're relatively bee free. Oh my gosh I can get it So we bring our supers in from the bee yard so we get them right here Next to our decapping tank. All right So the cappings on the honey Is the cap so obviously that's the part we're taking off. Okay So we run ours to strainer So this is our decapping tank. So we're going to put one strainer there So as we cut the capping some honey is going to come out So it'll run through and then our second strainer is going to go under the center fuse. Okay So the honey will come out and go into the bucket from there. All right So so basically we're just going to check make sure it's decapped. So this one here doesn't really have anything So we're going to go straight to the extractor. Okay, so it goes in here So if you put it here, it falls into the middle So we want to just catch it on that back little peg right there And basically we're just going to roll through all of them. So this one will have to be decapped So that one actually doesn't sorry. Okay, so this one has a little spot here So let me show you how to do that and then you can take off with it All right. So we have a cold knife, which is what that is. Okay, and we have what's called a capping fork Okay, so you're not trying to stab in we're just trying to remove the cap Is all we're trying to do and the backside side. Yeah, just anything any honey that is capped We want to take that cap off. Okay, so we are going to once they are decapped We're going to take them back out and put them back in the be yard So we don't want to damage any of the cells more than we have to because the bees will clean all that up And completely reuse everything just exactly how it is So this one that's completely capped we use a cold knife. It's my personal favorite way of doing it So you want to hold it slightly forward. Okay, go ahead and then take the knife It's going to be like cutting bread. So you don't want short choppy motions Just get get you a nice push You're not trying to cut into the wood You're just trying to remove So if you notice I got a slight angle to my knife So we're going to get as much off as we can. So there's a nail there to grab the wood. Okay. All right So again, just a slight Angle I'll be highly impressed if you get this on the first shot. All right And then take your cold knife your fork Just anything the knife wouldn't reach All right All right, so that's what our end goal. So sometimes there's a little bit and just take the knife kind of or the fork Slime angle. Okay. So now another trick So when we go from here, there's a lot of honey drippings to stay over the tank Okay, then give it a flip and then get over here as fast as you can. Okay All right. So go ahead and do you we got two more to go to fill up our spot here Angle in a little bit more. There you go. Long strokes Not bad I'll take not bad. Can I can I come along with that one? And then if you lean forward have your Have your frame like that when you cut it it falls in a little better And doesn't just keep otherwise it just hits and kind of keeps rolling down Then you're fighting with it the whole time you're trying to cut. All right So we do that then I'll flip him around Same approach here Long strokes and come back at it with the fork So nine frames to a box so on a big day we'd have 40 or 50 boxes to pull. Wow. So You you hone up your uh, blowing up on your knife skills pretty quick on a day like that What do you I just need to work a little bit on that? Uh, yeah, we're we're fine for today's purposes. All right I'm gonna go down here and kind of keep it as intact as possible Here Voila one more one more May I yep So when we decided to get into beekeeping supplies our goal was to Be heavy on education or at least as heavy as we could be So we we've ended up we do two events a year. We have b-day in the spring Which is the pickup day for the bees that we sell And then we have the arkansas honey festival in the fall So b-day is a basically a straight how-to on keeping bees for brand new beekeepers So if you're coming out, we'll actually take you out to the bee yard show you how to how to install bees all the different things And then the honey festival is geared toward more towards honey So we have a lot more families that come out lots of families activities at both events All right, so And obviously this is just a sycrafuse and we're That's yeah slinging the honey out. So it's got to be balanced if it's not this thing It'll buck like a bronco and try to take off on you. So we started out kind of low And then we'll get a little a little faster We'll just go until it starts to vibrate on us just to hair So if you look in there don't stick your hand in there But you can actually see the honey hitting the outer wall So basically as long as we have honey hitting the wall then we let it let it keep spinning So we'll get it we'll get it cranked up pretty good as more of the honey comes out the better we'll go To get stung uh and to sweat a little bit which I sweated just fine, but I did not get stung It was incredibly educational You know, the more knowledge I can have about food being in my business. Obviously, uh, I enjoy that a lot So it was incredibly educational and fun. He did good. He got right in there. Don't write in So messed up the column a little bit, but that's that's to be expected But he really didn't do too bad So I wasn't afraid of the bees got in there grab the boxes move them around so I give him a solid nine out of ten. There's always room for improvement, but So can I get away with this now? try this, uh It's nice Jeremy, thank you very much. Thanks for your help Well, you know, I've always been intrigued by this kind of stuff And so to get the opportunity to go and see it firsthand Literally firsthand was super duper educational and a lot of fun. So thanks for having me. Oh, yeah You did great. So you're welcome back anytime. So we've got two events a year. We'd love to have you out and get you involved in those