Meghan Markle has really tapped into her domestic side recently, with a passion for cooking and gardening seen on her Netflix series, With Love, Meghan. It turns out that this extends to beekeeping, as evidenced on her Instagram page.
'Look at all of that fresh honeycomb! Harvesting honey with my little honey. (Like mother, like daughter; she’s even wearing my gloves),' she captioned the post, wherein she approaches a beehive and cuts out some of the comb.
Beekeeping definitely requires the proper skills and equipment, but the good news is that it's both easy to learn, accessible, and beginner-friendly: like Meghan, you can try your hand at keeping bees from the comfort of your own backyard.
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According to experts, once you have attracted bees to your garden, if you want to harvest honey like Meghan, timing is key.
'How do you know the honey is ready? Bees give clear signals: they cap the combs with wax once the moisture is low enough to prevent fermentation,' explains Diane Drinkwater, chair of the British Beekeepers Association. 'Most beekeepers look for frames that are mostly sealed and will often use a refractometer to check water content which ideally should be under 18%. Harvest too early and the honey may spoil; too late and the bees may have consumed it themselves.
When it comes to the harvesting process, Diane explains that simply using a knife can be sufficient enough to get honey out of your combs.
'You don’t need to be a commercial beekeeper with a dedicated honey room to harvest,' she says. 'At its simplest, honey can be harvested using a “crush-and-strain” method by cutting combs from the frame with a sharp knife, mashing them into a large metal sieve over a large plastic honey bucket with a tap and letting gravity do the rest. This method is low-tech and inexpensive, though not the most efficient.'
With that being said, she proposed a more popular approach: 'More often, beekeepers use an extractor which is a drum-shaped device that spins the frames and flings honey to the sides, allowing it to drain through sieves into settling buckets. You’ll need some essential kit: an extractor (manual or electric), an uncapping tray and knife, food-grade buckets, sieves and clean jars. Everything must be food-safe and meticulously clean.'
A rewarding hobby to be sure, we can see why beekeeping is Meghan Markle's new obsession. Investing in a reference book is also a great idea if you are new to working with bees.
