The Bee School, Washington University’s beekeeping club, successfully harvested its first batch of honey in its three-year history last week.

Over a period of six hours on Monday, Sept. 15, the 17-member group harvested about 25 pounds of wildflower honey near the Butterfly Garden, which it distributed to its members and their families, as well as supporters of the club.

Club members said they enjoyed the process of harvesting after two years when they were unable to and hope to expand their crop with an additional colony.

This year was the first year that the hives yielded a product. Last year, the club did not attempt to harvest the bees’ honey, while the initial bee colony the year before did not produce enough extra honey for the club to harvest. According to junior Shannon Welsh, president of the Bee School, the number of bees was low last year because the hives were kept in a shady area.

Welsh added that the bees would have had enough honey to survive the winter, but the particularly cold winter and the location of the hive destroyed its survival chances.

However, Welsh believes that this year’s harvest indicates that the club is making great progress.

“It’s a good step,” she said. “It’s been three years in the making if you count when I was a freshman, and me and the co-president [junior] Paul [Edoka] were thinking, ‘Oh, we’re going to have honey to harvest,’ and now it’s finally happening.”

Welsh said she was thrilled with the results of this year’s harvest.

“It’s great. It’s our first harvest, so it was very exciting. It’s not as big as a harvest can usually be, because this colony that we harvested from is new—this spring is when we installed them—so they’re not going to be as robust as they will be next year as long as they stay healthy,” Welsh said.

Senior Mark Dally, a member of the Bee School, was in awe of the process that occurred a little over a week ago.

“Extraction went pretty well,” Dally said. “We got a ton of honey. It’s a really cool experience because there’s a part of you where it’s like, ‘This is a completely insane situation, and there’s all these bees everywhere,’ but at the same time, you kind of have another side where its like, ‘I can separate myself from my own reaction to this ludicrous situation’ and calmly follow directions…It’s really fun. It’s a rush.”

The extraction process starts when the honey frames are removed from the hives and placed into the honey extractor. The extractor is turned and the honey is propelled from the combs into a vat through centripetal force. The honey accumulates at the bottom of the vat and is then sent through a filter in order to become consumable.

According to Welsh, early fall is the best time to harvest the honey because the colony’s stores are the highest and the honey has the right water concentration.

Welsh added that the Bee School is in talks with Chancellor Mark Wrighton and his wife, Risa Zwerling Wrighton, to place a colony in the couple’s backyard. This would be the group’s second colony.