The beehives atop the Algonquin Theatre have resulted in a sweet harvest for some local students.<\/p>\n
Beekeeper Craig Nakamoto installed the hives this spring as part of a sustainability project and has been monitoring them ever since. On Monday, it was time to share some of the delicious bounty their industrious workers have produced.<\/p>\n
Nakamoto brought three frames laden with honey from the town hives and more from his own hives to show the grade 7\/8 class at the Muskoka Montessori School how to get the tasty liquid out of the combs and into bottles.<\/p>\n
Among the things the students noticed first were the strong fragrance and the weight of the combs – despite their relatively small size (about 50cm wide by 15cm tall) each one holds more than a kilogram (about three pounds) of honey.<\/p>\n
To extract the honey, first the students had to remove the wax plugs that the bees place over each comb to keep the honey in place. They experimented with three tools to uncap the combs: a small beekeeper’s tool called an uncapping fork, a serrated kitchen knife, and an electric knife, but they quickly abandoned the electric knife in favour of the other two methods.<\/p>\n\n\t\t