Everything I Touch is Sticky

I accidentally put this in the wrong place. I am re-posting it here. The original post date was May 24, and I harvested the honey Sunday May, 23.

I built a honey extractor out of odd parts and tried it out yesterday. I immediately twisted itself into a corkscrew shape. I need to redesign.

In the meantime I had pulled 15 frames of honey from Connie. Connie is one of my beehives that is very very successful and I had a hive box full of honey from last year and another half a box full of honey from this year.

I scraped off the comb by hand and use cheesecloth to strain it. I now have two and a half gallons of raw honey. I filled a dozen 12 oz bears, 18 small baby food jars and 1-1/2 64 oz containers with honey.

I have taken two hot soaking baths since, but I still feel sticky. The honeycomb gets on your skin and won’t come off. It softens the skin and it is used in cosmetics, but doesn’t wash off. I have about 3 pounds of raw honeycomb in the cheesecloth that I have to melt and filter. I also have a quart of “chunk” honey for Jim, who likes his honey unfiltered with the occasional dead bee in it.

I ate so much honey in the process of straining and bottling the stuff that I feel icky today.

I am giving away the baby food jars at work to coworkers and the guy at the coffee shop from Pakistan who used to keep bees.

4 Comments

  1. Michelle (Mush) wrote:

    If you go to an auto-parts store, you can probably buy a small tub of hand cleaner/degreaser stuff (the best kind has pumice powder which will help clean the pours of your skin.) Don't worry; it's perfectly safe for your skin and hair.

    As far as I know, it's safe for clothing as well.


    Another thing you might try is washing your hands in a mixture of baking soda and water. (Something like 2 parts baking soda, 1 part water.)

    The down side is that it leaves your skin feeling very dry- as if you lived in an area with 0% humidity and dust storms.

    Hope this helps.

    Thursday, May 27, 2010 at 11:06 am | Permalink
  2. Keith wrote:

    I have about 3 pounds of beeswax that I want to filter and make candles. It is the beeswax that makes my hands sticky. Now, a few days later, they are still soft from the wax, but no longer sticky.

    Thursday, May 27, 2010 at 11:32 am | Permalink
  3. JUSTINE wrote:

    How does the honey taste?

    Friday, May 28, 2010 at 12:16 pm | Permalink
  4. Keith wrote:

    It is very light in color and consistency. My friend John says that it “tastes like spring”. He says you can taste all the subtle scents of spring flowers in it. It does not have the strong honey smell that commercial honey has and it is not as thick. It does have a flowery aroma.

    Commercial honey is boiled and sometimes sugar is added to thicken it. Much of the honey on the supermarket shelf comes from Vietnam or China and who knows what’s in it.

    My honey comes from the trees and flowers around my house. It has trace amounts of allergens from pollen, but these are sometimes said to be homeopathic in that they help reduce allergies.

    Friday, May 28, 2010 at 12:48 pm | Permalink