It might be the closest we get to the life of Tom Sawyer, who famously persuaded his friends to have the “pleasure” of whitewashing his Aunt Polly’s fence. In our case, the “fence” is extracting honey from umpteen frames we’ve removed from our bee colonies.

It’s a gooey, sticky job, usually done in our garage out of sight of the bees. And we usually choose a sticky, hot day in late August, good for the flow of honey but not necessarily for the comfort of the humans doing the extraction.

The job includes hours of standing at a table with a heated knife to slice the wax caps off both sides of each frame. Each honey box holds nine frames, and we put about 14 honey boxes on four hives. You do the math – that’s a lot of frames to process!

Once that task is done, uncapped frames go into a large metal tub – three frames at a time. A hand-powered crank rotates the frames to remove the honey like a giant salad spinner.

At the bottom of the tub is a spigot, which we open to empty the honey into a four-gallon bucket. A mesh basket on top of the bucket filters out wax and other debris as is flows out of the extractor. I usually bottle the honey another day in the kitchen.

Lots of work? You bet!

A full frame of honey

Slicing off the wax caps

Using the heated knife

Making sure honey is uncapped

Everyone gets a t urn

Spinning the frames

Another beautiful frame

The work setup

Lots of licks!

But also lots of fun! Just ask our grandkids, friends, neighbors and family. They’ve all been a part of this annual affair.

This year we had something like 15 people packed into our garage where we hide the honey boxes after they’ve been harvested. We always extract in the garage mainly because we can hose down the area when we are done. It is next to impossible to keep honey contained. Only a drop or two will create a sticky mess on the floor, doorknobs, faucets, equipment, chairs, you name it.

I baked plenty of cornbread and zucchini muffins to eat with the honey and prepared a do-it-yourself midday picnic on the deck. We had lots of help pulling frames, uncapping honey, turning the crank and watching the honey flow out the gate.

It’s also a fun time to share our hobby with others, explain the process, answer questions, impart a few “gee-whiz” facts and generally talk about bees, a favorite pastime of any bee geek like me.

The first thing is to sort the frames into uncapped honey and capped honey. We try to keep the two types separate because the uncapped honey does not keep as well as the capped honey. Honey in cells that have been capped by the bees with a light coat of wax will keep literally forever. They cap it when honey has only 18 percent moisture. How they know that, I’ll never figure out.

Uncapped honey, or wet honey, can be further dehydrated using a de-humidifier in a closed room. I usually do not bother doing that, instead, enjoying it right away and giving to friends and family to enjoy.

The next step gets a lot of interest from the adults who come to our honey party. This is when we use a heated knife to slice off the top layer of wax on the honey combs. Many adults find it strangely satisfying to watch the wax layer curl into a cone, so every adult gets a turn to use the heated knife.

After the frames are in the extractor, the younger folks help turn the crank to make the frames spin. Our extractor has a plastic lid so they easily can watch the honey fly.

When the extractor gets full, we open the honey gate at the bottom. This always plays to an audience and a few “oohs” and “ahhs.”

The cappings go back on top of the bee hives as well as the spun-out honey frames. The bees are quick to clean up both. Before that last step, however, there is plenty of honey around for tasting!

The party lasts most of a day, and our guests are free to come and go. It’s a great time and something that has become somewhat of a tradition. And at the end of the day, we have that great feeling of having accomplished something – although I know our bees have done the lion’s share of the work.

We processed a record amount of honey this year – 213 pounds or about 18 gallons. It’s sitting in seven buckets, waiting to be bottled and labeled. For now, that’s enough. I feel truly blessed by our bees!