Honey Harvest 2018

It has been a good year for the bees but a slow one for this blog, sorry about that. The 'Girls" came thru the winter very well, I split them into 6 colonies this year, trying not to be greedy. As well I moved them back a bit for more room and a bit more winter protection. The season was a good one, hot but they like it that way, and they have a water source several yards behind them, which is a flowing brook. This years harvest was better than last years, and just as tasty.  I did run the honey thru the strainer a second time as there were some partials in it, small bits of wax, it cleaned up well. Now to enjoy what our "Girls" did for us.

Our improved bee yard and new colonies.

Setting up for the harvest.

A couple of medium frames spun a bit too fast, they gave way.

The pail on the left has hot water in it to loosen up the honey
a bit for better flow, the one on the right has pail inside to
store the newly strained honey.

This years honey harvest. several pails of honey, two of cappings
one has the broken comb with honey in it. Can't get it any
fresher than this.

Honey Harvest

The other day I took off the honey supers, a couple of weeks early because when I added the new brood super it had new foundation, so I split it up among the three supers to give them time to draw out the comb and get ready for winter. Bringing the supers and equipment down and back this year was easier, thanks to a friend who gave us a garden cart. I did some work on it and it now doubles as a bee cart. I extracted the honey today, we had two supers of shallow frames and four medium frames we took off earlier in the year to see if we can get a different tasting honey than what we would get at then end of the season. I had four honey supers but only two were full and the other two were light. They still had to draw out the comb this year, next year it will be better, like this is mush better than last year. Last year I estimated we got 14 lbs from two colonies, this year 68 lbs from four colonies. As for the taste test, I sampled a lot today and couldn't tell, I'll have to wait for ReBecca to do the official test.

Bee/garden cart.

Bee escape they are still escaping.

Lots of bees to go into the winter with.

Getting ready to spin out the honey.

Wax and honey everywhere.

Four shallow frames fit perfectly.

Six gallons of honey.

Out golden nector.

Harvest Time

Well it's harvest time and we did OK, not as good as we hoped. We only have two colonies, the left one didn't produce a Queen when we put the Queen cells in that came for the right colony, that is because the first one out will kill the others and we didn't notice the Queens were dead when I moved the frame over. We still have two very strong colonies, that did make us some honey. Not as much as I wanted because I switched a full honey super from the center colony the left one, when I thought it was just week. Well they didn't have many gatherers so they just enjoyed the full honey super, as it was fully drained when I looked.

So back to the harvest, we had only two boxes of honey and not all the frames were full only about half. I would suspect it's because I added two boxes to each colony thinking more is better, but that just make more work to draw out now comb and make honey. Lesson learnt and we'll be better prepared for next year. I used a scraper to remove the capping's and put four frames in the extractor at a time, gave a big spin to remove the honey, turned them, did it again and repeated the process until all the frames were empty. The honey went through a double sieve strainer and then I put it through a fine clothe, it's nice and clean ready to go.  We got about 14 lbs of honey and a couple of pounds of wax capping's. I cleaned out as much as I could and then put them outside today to let the "girls" clean up the rest, it's their honey after all. I'll give it a final cleaning when they have finished.

Two colonies left.

Very strong when we took off the honey supers.

Extraction set up.

A bit of honey and the wax cappings.

Capping scraper set up.

Lots of work done for me.

They are having a great time.

Full of bees.