The First Real Honey Harvest

Friday 23rd July

With the increasing quantity of honey being stored in the hives, it is obvious that a proper extractor has become the only sensible way of harvesting it properly. I ordered one two weeks ago and it finally arrived today (amazingly fast really, considering that this must be by far the busiest time of year for such equipment). Not wanting to hang about any longer we decided to get on with the job straight away.

There will easily be two full supers available - just Beatrix's colony alone has almost three on it. Not having placed a clearer-board on previously (they usually take about 24hrs to work), I just planned to manually brush the bees from each frame and remove them that way - it takes much longer but with docile bees like these ones it isn't an unpleasant job!

I picked out the frames one by one, with a spare empty super standing in the trolley next to me.

I brushed every bee off back into the hive then quickly placed it in the empty super - this had a sheet under it and another one on top, to prevent the flying bees from getting back in again.

It took about an hour altogether, but I wasn't rushing and the bees were very calm. I removed one full super of honey from each of these two hives.

Not wanting to bring any bees back indoors I stopped again a few yards away, once all the flying bees had stopped following me, and checked each frame again for any stray ones. There were a couple which had managed to sneak back in there, but they soon went back home when I brushed them off again.

Having taken them inside (and firmly closed all the doors and windows!) we started uncapping. Rather than using an uncapping knife we used a hot-air gun. This may not be the traditional way of doing it, but it is so much faster - you just gently blow the heat towards the frame from a distance and the wax cappings just melt away to the side of each cell.

It was surprising how dark most of the honey is - all year long it has looked very pale, like on the outside of this frame, but the honey in the centre is clearly far darker from a different source of nectar.

Most of the frames were full of completely dark honey, like this one.

With four frames uncapped on both sides they stand in the extracting machine. Once they are positioned, the lid is replaced and the handle is cranked round. The centrifugal force spins the honey from the frames and it flows down the sides to the bottom of the drum.

It soon started to flow out into the strainer. This double-strainer has two meshes - a coarse one on top (1.5mm) to filter out any large pieces of wax, pollen, etc. then a fine mesh underneath (0.5mm) to make the honey as clear as possible. The honey flowed directly into the storage bucket underneath, which also has a valve at the bottom for decanting straight into jars afterwards.

Before long the much darker honey was starting to come through and it was all flowing smoothly.

Extracting four frames at a time, then replacing the empty ones back into the super, it took quite a while but was good fun - I'm not sure I'd be enjoying it with much more than this to cope with though!

The last few scrapes came out of the drum once the cage mechanism was removed - everything dismantles very easily, making cleaning out with hot water not too difficult. Apparently these last few washings from the bottom can be saved to make mead, but I'm not even considering that for the time being, so it went down the plug hole instead.

Once everything else was cleared away, the storage bucket was lifted up onto a higher work surface, then we could pour the filtered honey directly into the prepared jars. It was easy to cut off the flow using the valve as it reached the 'fill line'.

There were a total of 46 1lb jars of honey, plus the last quarter pound draining into another jar - a bonus for us to keep and sample immediately!

It's a much deeper colour than our previous experimental batch, but still just as runny.

I quickly labelled a few jars up ready to take to the shop tomorrow - it's taken more than 3 years to get to this point but we now finally have real honey for sale!

A Few Running Repairs

Wednesday 21st July
I didn't want to disturb the bee hives midweek like this but while cleaning the varroa floors last night I found that something was wrong with Charlie's varroa floor. The slide-out tray was stuck fast and wouldn't remove. I gave it a tug with a pair of pliers and a bit split off and it still stayed stuck fast. I needed to get at it from the inside to see what's causing the problem, trying not to cause too much disruption.

It was cloudy and starting to rain a bit, but not enough to bother the bees much.

I removed the entire stack down to the brood box.

Then I carefully lifted the brood box away from the floor section. There was a danger of the queen dropping out of the bottom and getting lost, but I handled it carefully and stood it on a spare upturned lid, just in case.

There was a large discoloured patch across the centre of the slide-out tray and it was still stuck completely fast - it looked like the bees had managed to stick it to the wire mesh grid with propolis!

I had to completely remove the whole floor section and replace it with a couple of spare nuc floors. I don't have a spare full-sized floor but two nucs next to each other are the exact same size. This will only be a temporary fix to the problem - hopefully I can fix the varroa floor quickly.

It looks a bit odd having two entrances like this, but I don't imagine it'll bother them in the slightest.

While I was doing some repairs anyway, I decided to sort out that broken landing board on Dipsy's hive - it's been looking a bit shabby for a few weeks now.

It looks like a disaster area here but this was far simpler because I didn't need to seperate the brood box from the varroa floor, meaning there was no danger of the queen falling out of the bottom of the box this time.

I swapped the broken landing board for a spare one I'd prepared earlier.

The brood box with floor sat straight back on top of it.

I decided to have a quick look to check one of those 'honey bound' frames from the weekend. The bees have taken the stores out, just as expected, giving loads more room for Dipsy to lay.

All finished - much smarter now. I should have got around to doing that weeks ago, it only took five minutes in total.

Looking more closely at the damaged varroa floor, the bees actually have stuck the entire centre section of the sliding tray to the wire mesh grid with propolis, making it both completely useless and also a great place for dirty old grot to get stuck where the bees can't clean it. This shouldn't be possible at all - I don't think it's a coincidence that this is the only varroa floor I've ever bought with the word 'economy' in the title. As usual, 'economy version' is really just another way of saying, 'it's a bit rubbish, but it's cheap enough for you to think it's probably worth buying - though you'll regret it after you've been using it for a short while!'

Some Faithful Old Foragers Return

Sunday 18th July

Having relocated the last nuc just a mile and a half away this morning,  I stood an empty one on the original site to catch any returning foragers.

I tapped on the roof late in the afternoon to see if any bees were inside and one did come out of the front entrance. I put an almost empty feeder in the roof space, just to give them something to live on for the time being and left it until evening, when all the flying had finished for the day.

I was relieved to find that there weren't many in there at all - not one in the nuc itself and just a few up in the feeder.

This is all that returned to the original site - just seven bees, and two of them are drones. I'm not inclined to drive all the way to the next village, just for the sake of taking seven bees back to their home again. However, I didn't want to leave them here to starve - a pretty rotten reward for their loyalty! I gave them all a good squirt with some sugar syrup and tossed them into the front of another hive. The guard bees there should hopefully welcome these sticky visitors for the night and maybe by tomorrow morning they'll have decided to stay there instead!

Relocating the Final Nuc

Saturday 17th July

11pm: I'm delivering this last nuc of bees to their new home tomorrow morning so I came out after dark to make sure that all the bees were safely shut inside for the journey.

It was pitch black out by now (these photos were all taken using a flash, obviously) but there were still a couple of bees outside.

Not wanting to leave any homeless bees behind, I gave them a quick spray with the water mister. Thinking it was rain, they quickly nipped inside, then I could bung up the entrance with a chunk of foam padding.

I strapped up the nuc with the cords, one of them holding the bung tightly in place. The torch sat under the top strap pointing the way in the darkness.

I found a spot near the barn where the early morning sun won't hit it. There is very little ventilation in there now and there could easily be a total meltdown in there if it gets too hot!

I went back to the original site and placed an empty nuc there, full of frames.

Because this colony is only being relocated a mile and a half away, there is a risk that some foragers could return here. Standing this nuc here means that any stray ones can be easily caught. Depending on how many (if any) return, I'll work out what to do with them then.

Supering Up

Saturday 17th July
All three colonies have seemed frantically busy this week so I had a check inside to make sure that there was still plenty of room for all this nectar they're bringing in.

Beatrix first. This colony has now rapidly become the strongest of the lot, far more so than either of the other two.

I was surprised that this shallow frame, which has been in the brood chamber for a few weeks now, has still not been built up with drone cell comb, like it was last time I checked it. There seems to be very little wax-building being done in this colony at all, but they are incredibly busy at foraging and there is still plenty of room for the queen to continue laying.

We found the queen quite easily, even without her spot (Beatrix was marked green twice last year and both times the spot disappeared by the next inspection, so we gave up trying. There are still some tiny flecks of green left so we can tell it is still her and not a replacement!) and the health of this colony seems great, though there is already not much room left in the supers.

I added a new super directly over the brood box [This is known as 'bottom supering' - adding the empty super at the top of the stack is called 'top supering']. Many beekeepers have different opinions about which technique is better and my reasoning for using bottom supering is that there is very obviously a much shorter distance for the bees to have to lift the stores. Raising several kilos of nectar those extra few feet to the top of the stack would be a mammoth task for them, so having the space for stores as close to the front door as possible seems to me to be the most sensible thing to do. As I said, opinions are divided on this and I'm sure many would disagree with me.

I also swapped a couple of the supers over so that this pattern is continued throughout the stack, as shown. This does mean a job of heavy lifting for me, just to check how much space they have in the empty super, but it saves them having to lift extra weight themselves!

It seemed less busy in Charlie's colony and they have only slowly built up their stores. There seems no obvious reason for it but it seemed a far less productive colony, though the health was still good.

I was expecting more from Dipsy's colony - this one has previously been the strongest of the three. However there was not a great deal extra in the supers, easily room for another week or so.

I checked in the brood box to make sure that there wasn't a problem here and found this:

This explains a lot - there were almost three frames each side of the brood nest entirely full of sealed honey on each side. This is known as being 'honey bound'. This means that, because of the stores down below, the queen has far less space to lay eggs. I need these bees to move these stores up into the supers so that Dipsy can get on and lay more.

I scratched the surface of the entire comb, damaging all the cappings. This should encourage them to remove it from these frames and take it all up above.

It was surprising that this frame right next to it has such lighter honey than the other one. There can only be a few weeks' difference between the harvest of each nectar source but the colour of honey seems entirely different!

This shows what an advantage having a marked queen is - she's clearly visible, even from this distance (click on the photo for a larger view).

The health in here seemed great as well. Dipsy was laying well but has only been able to use the central five frames, the rest being full of honey. Hopefully now she'll be able to get back on with her job without interruption.