Taking Honey

[JimWWhite]

Well, yesterday Teresa went into the hives and took four supers of honey off and this morning we're about to process it and get it into bottles. We borrowed the extractor from the bee keeping association we belong to and we've cleaned it up with boiling hot water to sanitize it and wiped it down. Next we're going to use a long knife and cut the caps off the frames and put them in the extractor. The extractor is a large drum/tub that has a geared crank that spins at high speed and slings the honey out of the combs and onto the sides where it flows down to the bottom to a gate and filter. The frames are fitted into racks inside the drum to keep them stable in the spin. Then when all the honey has flowed to the bottom we open the gate and it goes through another filter on top of a five-gallon bucket with another gate on the bottom of it. The filters are normally just muslin cloth. Then once its in the bucket it's time to bottle it. We put everything up in one-pint and half-pint jars. No other processing is required other than wiping down the jars and putting on labels. My guess is we'll get about five gallons of honey, maybe a little less in this run. We expected more but with the splits and everything it cut down on our volume this spring. Next year.

And the great thing about cleaning up is we let the bees do it. We'll take the extractors and all tools out to the hives and leave them out for one or two days and when we come back it will be able to pass a hospital sanitation inspection. There won't be a spec of honey anywhere. We'll just take boiling water to the extractor again just to be on the safe side and then take it back to the club.

Hopefully this October we'll be able to repeat the process. In good years you should be able to pull honey off twice a year. We always leave them more than enough to get them through the winter. Honeybees make way more honey than they'd ever need in a year.

 

[Southern Gardener]

Congratulation on your great honey harvest! I'm a newbie beekeeper so I haven't robbed my hives yet. I'm getting ready to put another super on my first hive and I'm hoping to get honey this fall.

 

[Collector]

sounds like you guys are going to have some pretty busy work in front of you. When I was in highschool I would help my uncle extract the honey from his hives, we were constantly moving, there was always something needing to be done while the extracting was going on. He kept us going by paying us in honey comb yum.

 

[retiredwith4acres]

Have fun and be ready for a rest! I did this two weekends ago. I think you might get 6 or 7 gallon from four supers. I got 6+ with my three. Do you do the 10 frame hives or 8 frame? My brother is trying to get us to do 9 frames in our 10 frame hives. He says we will get more honey per frame. Just wondering if others have tried this.

 

[lesa]

Jim, I have been thinking about you and hoping you were well. Been so long since we have heard from you! Glad you had a successful honey harvest- such sticky work, but so delicious! I am always amazed at what a quick and complete job the bees do on clean up! I wish they could come into my kitchen!

 

[Smiles Jr.]

My brother is trying to get us to do 9 frames in our 10 frame hives. He says we will get more honey per frame. Just wondering if others have tried this.

This is a common practice. When you put 9 frames in a 10 frame box it creates more space for the bees to build up the comb a little more. This not only makes up for the one missing frame (in quantity of honey) but it also makes de-capping much easier. The bees build the comb cells about 1/4" to 5/16" taller, or deeper, and the de-capping knife is soooo much easier to use when the cells are taller. Timing is important on the removal of the one frame. If the frame is removed too early in the season the bees will try to reduce the spacing by filling it with wax. So you have to watch the comb and when it is about 1/4" to 5/16" deep you can remove one frame and equally space the remaining 9 frames in the hive and then the bees will not fill the extra space with wax. They just build the comb up more. The one frame that you remove can then be placed into the next super that you put on top along with 9 new frames to fill the 10 frame super. If the honey flow is strong you can start the whole procedure over again when the new frames are filling up.

 

[JimWWhite]

Have fun and be ready for a rest! I did this two weekends ago. I think you might get 6 or 7 gallon from four supers. I got 6+ with my three. Do you do the 10 frame hives or 8 frame? My brother is trying to get us to do 9 frames in our 10 frame hives. He says we will get more honey per frame. Just wondering if others have tried this.

Teresa is the beekeeper in our family. I'm her tool b***h who she sends back up to the shed to get this or that while she does all the hard work. I get down with her even though I don't have a suit or veil. There may be 10,000 bees buzzing around while she's working the hives but I've only been stung once and that was after we'd closed up the hive. It got me right on the tip of my nose. It felt like someone drove a nail in my face. My eyes instantly filled up with tears and I stumbled back up to the house to get an ice pack on it. But it never swelled up. Anyways, all of our honey supers are mediums and they all have 9 frames. The fellow above gave a really good reason on why to do 9 frames vs 10 in a 10-frame hive. We use a couple of these little metal spacers to hold the frames in place and it works out really well. We did get just a shade over 6 gallons once we processed the caps and spun out that honey at the end. We have a lot of sourwood trees in our area so the honey is darker and has that special flavor that comes from sourwood. Of course it has tulip poplar, rape, and whatever else is within 2 or 3 miles of the hives in it too. Loads of fun. Load of hard work in the sun too. Then we had to lock ourselves up in the garage with the extractor because the bees wanted their honey back and wanted in. We had 3 fans going but it was hot in there. I think we both lost about 8 pounds during the process.

 

[JimWWhite]

This heat has been brutal, especially to the garden and the bees. We have several of these concrete doodads that Teresa made as waterers and we added some rocks and filled them with water. We have to refill them everyday when we get home after work because the bees just carry it back to their hives. I don't think that much is lost to evaporation because the humidity is so high. And these pics don't do justice because you should see hundreds of bees swarming trying to find a dry spot to land and fill up before heading back to their hives. I sat and watched them this afternoon and I started counting when one landed on a pebble or rock and started tanking up. Typically they would remain for up to a minute and then rocket off back across the yard. I wish I had a way to mark them to see how many trips one would make in an hour. Another thing we've noticed is they don't take to a new waterer right away. It has to build up a smell or something before they start visiting it on a regular basis. Our neighbor down the lane has a large swimming pool but he says they've not noticed the bees around the pool. They do know they are working their flowers and bushes around the house and say that since we've started keeping bees that their garden and flowers are much more prolific and healthier than before. There's a creek down behind us about 200 yards away that I'm sure they visit there as well.

Anyways, as Granny Lizzy always said: its hotter than the hinges on the gate post to Hades!

 

[JimWWhite]

Jim, I have been thinking about you and hoping you were well. Been so long since we have heard from you! Glad you had a successful honey harvest- such sticky work, but so delicious! I am always amazed at what a quick and complete job the bees do on clean up! I wish they could come into my kitchen!

I've been well. Just been working at work and around our little farm getting the garden in. Olivia, our 6-year old granddaughter gave us a puppy for Christmas and like all free puppies it ain't. So far we figure it's cost us about $1500 in repairing the invisible fence and replacing the collar, vet bills, getting her spayed, etc. Then when she got into Teresa's asparagus box and tore up one corner I just knew she was dead but I talked Teresa out of having her stuffed and mounted. I had to put a 4-foot high fence around the entire garden which was another $300 and two weekends. Just been busy... It's been fun but I come home about 6:00, eat dinner, and go out in the garden to do something and then it's dark thirty and time to go in. Haven't had much internet time lately. Here's a pic of the garden. On the far right side those are the Compari tomatoes I planted this year from seeds I fermented from a couple of store-boughts. They taste just as good as the originals. More on them later.

 

[so lucky]

Your garden looks fantastic. Hope you can keep it alive in this heat. Are those the hives along the tree line in back? Do you suppose the bees (and other insects) feel the heat, or maybe it is just the lack of water that hurts them? And of course, the dying clover and other blooming things. I have sure seen a lot of bees on the blooming things I am watering.