Students help with honey harvest

This September Kenzie Fairchild’s culinary arts class traveled to a local apiary to learn about harvesting honey, and recently they completed the project by bottling some of the sweet golden liquid they had collected.

The bee hives are owned by Tamara Trail’s family, and are located at various places on the Trails’ ranch.

“My father-in-law manages the bees, and feeds them through the winter,” said Trail. “He harvested all the supers and brought them to the barn for us.”

Trail explained that they do not have enough bee suits to allow the students to gather the supers (the upper boxes on the bee hives that are used by the bees for storing honey).

Typical supers hold 10 wooden frames that the bees fill with wax and honey.

The students helped cut the caps off of the honey comb, and loaded the frames into the extractor (a type of centrifuge).

The honey was spun out of the comb, collected into buckets, and last week the students bottled the honey.

“We had a great time and brought home a five gallon bucket of beeswax that we plan to use to experiment making different things,” said Fairchild.

Fairchild added that her students have also learned about leadership, food handling, and catering.

“Family, Career and Community Leaders of America (FCCLA) officers went to leadership training in Glenrose,” said Fairchild. “Every student in FCS classes or FCCLA have earned their food handler certification. The classes and members of FCCLA have also been catering and thematically decorating teacher luncheons.”