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Nevra Ledwon’s backyard bees have produced their first honey of the season, bringing friends and neighbors to her McLean home for a hands-on lesson in harvesting it.

Ledwon carried 12 honeycomb frames from her two hives into her kitchen after shaking off some understandably irritated bees. Nearly every cell in the frames was packed with honey and sealed beneath wax.

Bees cap the cells once the honey reaches about 17 percent moisture, Ledwon explained. The day’s first task was to scrape away that wax before extracting the honey.

Kathleen and Denis joined the effort, which Ledwon said would otherwise take her all afternoon. Her son Hendrix also often helps. After a slow start, Kathleen found a rhythm with the yellow scraper, sending wax and traces of honey into a large bowl. Ledwon told her helpers they could chew the wax to enjoy the remaining honey, then either spit it out or swallow it.

With the wax removed, the frames went into a large extractor three at a time. They spun for several minutes, flinging honey into the vat. Ledwon then opened a spigot at the bottom, allowing the honey to ooze through a filter and into a large bucket.

Each batch tastes different because the bees gather nectar from whatever is blooming at the time. Ledwon said some people especially enjoy the late-spring harvest, which is influenced largely by nearby black locust trees and has a particularly light flavor.

Her interest in beekeeping began during the COVID pandemic, when she spotted hives in a neighbor’s yard while driving down the street. She stopped to ask questions and eventually started keeping bees herself—without initially realizing how complicated, time-consuming and costly the work would become.

Ledwon usually extracts two batches each year and stops harvesting sometime in July. That is when the bees are treated with FormicPro against an endemic mite, and she does not want to consume honey exposed to the treatment. She also leaves the hives with enough stored honey to sustain the colonies through winter.

By fall, she said, bees can become anxious about whether they have sufficient food, a period when beekeepers often notice a decline in their temperament.

Ledwon sells plastic jars of honey to friends and neighbors to offset some of her expenses. She has also hired Armando to manage the hives, though caring for the bees and keeping them healthy still requires plenty of work.

Despite the cost and effort, Ledwon finds it deeply satisfying to produce an organic food in her own backyard.