Bees and Honey

Karen's place got this small tree in the garden that just grew a bee hive, and a pest exterminator was called in this morning to eradicate the menace.

The hive in question was about the size of a mug, and all the pest control guy did was to spray gas from a canister onto it ("Class 2 gas" he said, so now we know), plucked off the branch, and handed it to us. I didn't see the job and never did see any bees around at all.

This is the chunk that is still stuck to the branch, showing the honey oozing out of the honeycomb cells, looks delicious!

This bit dropped off after we handled the branch after a while - the waxy honeycomb is very soft. You can see that the larvae grubs inside, thank goodness they are stored separately from the honey cells.

Here you can see another view of the branch, with the flower pollen stored in the cells exposed to us.

I scrapped the honeycomb bits out into a bowl with a stick and sort of compressed the honeycomb for the honey to ooze out.

The man said the gas is poisonous but it wasn't sprayed directly onto the hive so it can be eaten, and so i tried. Chewed the honeycomb was a bit, swallowed a bit after I ingested the honey, and spit out the rest of the tasteless wax. Hockey the dog lapped out the rest of the honey happily.