It's that time of year again, a time when beekeepers go out to the bees houses and knock on the door.

"Do you have any honey to spare this year?"

As I went out to open my hive, I noticed that my little friends had been very busy indeed. Not only had they made more than enough honey for themselves, they had also made enough for me and a few other people. In fact, I ended up getting about 12 pints and four quarts from one super, which I figure is pretty good. Especially considering the fact that I put two uncapped honey frames back into the hive.

Actually, one of my friends, whose name still sounds like Ben McConald after all of these years, came up to help me. I gave him a big female rabbit and he brought me some small ones and helped me remove my honey and get started doing my ‘extracting' work.

Extracting honey is one of the messiest jobs I have ever undertaken in my life. Add in the fact that I am not exactly an ‘old timer' in the field of honey production and you'll get an ugly picture indeed. It all starts with removing the honey super, or box, from the hive. The bees don't take well to having their winter stores robbed. After that box is removed, then the hive has to be recovered and the box, with bees still clinging on, is carried to a location away from the hive.

After that, the bees are brushed off of the frames inside. Frames are like little picture frames full of bees wax and honey. Once you get the bees off a frame and put that frame somewhere away from the bees (which are by now swarming around in a cloud), another has to be swept and so forth.

The next step is where the amateurs are separated from the more experienced, and better equipped, beekeepers. The frames are then taken somewhere inaccessible to bees — in my case, the kitchen — and the wax is cut out of the frames. If you have better equipment and sense, you end up with something called an extractor and you ‘uncap' the honey and 'spin' it into a bucket.

However, if you are like me, a man with little or no equipment or sense, you have to find another way to separate the honey and the comb. The only extracting I did was trying to extract myself from the honey.

I started out with cheese cloth, which did an excellent job placed inside a pot with holes in the bottom. I smashed the comb with a potato masher and the honey was running through well, at least for a little while. Then the cloth fell inside and got all mashed up with the comb and everything clogged up. Winnie the Pooh never has this much trouble,

I thought. He just dips his pot in a tree and goes home. After giving up on that method, I chose to try the advice of other beekeepers, who I now feel were giving each other knowing winks. I used a new pair of nylon hose to get the honey out.

However, in order to use nylon pantyhose, you have to have a pair. I didn't own any. So, I went to the store in search of pantyhose. These are things that men normally do not purchase, I realize. So, when I started asking the woman at the counter questions, I got strange looks.

"How strong are these pantyhose?" I asked.

"They hold up well to picks and they don't run very much," she said. "I don't have any picks and I don't need to run," I explained. "What I need is a pair that I can squeeze without busting them."

"We probably don't have them in your size," she said with a smile. After explaining that I am not a cross-dresser, I ended up with a pair of beige control-tops with reinforced feet — a little more, but worth it. The woman told me so.

Even with those purchased, I still had another messy job ahead. I had to put the honeycomb in the hose and smash it, squeezing out the fresh honey. It was a beautiful light golden color. I could have called it sourwood.

As I smashed it out and it leaked all over my hands like a pair of slick, sweet gloves, I realized how hard it is to get honey off of your hands. In addition, the other leg of the hose that I wasn't using kept falling into the honey, but I couldn't get a knife to cut it off because I was already coated up to my wrists.

As if that weren't enough, I soon discovered that the bees can smell honey for miles. My cracked screen door was soon covered with bees, all of whom were interested in getting a little bit of their food back.

I had to clean my hands as best I could and then wash them with warm water, go shut the door and start over. By now, I had worked for about four hours and had mustered a total of two pints of honey in jars.

The pantyhose honey was seeping out into the bucket, but it wasn't in jars. I still had to figure out how to do that nasty job as well. After I had covered the floor with honey, I decided that I might better try something else. I placed a garbage bag on the floor to catch any spills and felt better about the whole thing. At least until the bag started sticking to my knees as I tried to finish smashing the comb. I couldn't move the bag because, once again, my hands were covered in honey.

I just kept going until the hose had quit dripping and then placed them in the pot with holes, now clean, to drip down in another pot. Fearful of ants, I put the other pot in a tray full of water. Once I started pouring honey from the bucket onto the comb I had already cut and put into the jars, I realized that I had more than I had first thought. As it ended up, I had about a dozen pints and four quarts from that one super. I don't know for sure, but I think that is pretty good. Especially considering the rudimentary methods of extraction I was using.

Sunday I took my jars to a store and sat for awhile and soon had sold all 12 pints. The honey and jars looked very nice after I cleaned the sticky mess up. All in all, I must say it was an adventure. But it still wasn't my favorite Saturday. No matter, it was too rainy to fish or run a chainsaw anyhow.

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