Bischoff Honey: Our Family Business

Today I’m taking a break from my regular posts to give you a little inside look into our family business: Bischoff Honey. My dad has always been very interested in Bees and has talked about owning bee hives my whole life. Three years ago he decided to buy a few hives just for our family to have honey.  He, along with my brother, Luke, loved producing the honey so much, that this year we have over 80 bee hives. This has really become a business for the entire family! It takes every member of the family (along with a few extras!!) to “rob” the bee hives. This past weekend was our first extraction of the year! We now have 70 gallons of honey to distribute and only extracted about 1/3 of our hives. We will definitely have a busy year. I hope you enjoy learning about the process with me and my family :)

First, Dad & Luke “smoke” the bees (this basically drives them out of the honey boxes) so that removing the boxes of honey is easy.


Then they remove the full boxes from each hive…

The boxes can weigh up to 80lbs when full of honey! What a workout in the 100 degree weather!

lots and lots of bees!!

My dad & my brother Luke ;)

This is a peek inside one of the boxes…the frames are full of honey.

a peek into our garage! Set-up and clean-up are the longest parts of the day :)

Luke holding a frame full of honey! The thin coating you see over the honey is the wax the bees apply to “finish” the frame (when it’s full). 

My sister, Marianne, is cutting that same thin layer of was off of the frames so the honey can escape!

These are the frames in the extractor. This is how the honey is spun out of the frames!

My sister, Meredith is on loading duty :)

My grandpa cranking the extractor and spinning out honey!

Margaret Mary (9) is my youngest sister and hands the “honey cutters” the frames

A frame fresh out of the extractor! No more honey :)

My grandma straining the honey :)

a bee managed to get into the garage!

John Paul (5) is the baby of the family and this year was finally old enough to help with the business!

the girls :) minus me!

More honey waiting to be extracted ;)

the boys are inspecting each frame!

he didn’t actually lick it! Promise!!!

the reason behind the gloves? honey is super sticky and can be uncomfortable to have on your hands the entire day. Surgical gloves work amazing to keep your hands honey-free!

My dad’s parents helping us out :)

wax & bees!

My grandmother and I sneaking a quick shot!

HONEY!!! Each bucket holds 5 gallons :)

the excess wax that gets cut off during the extraction process :)


Luke in his bee suit :)