The time of year for harvesting a bit of honey is here. The hives, as they are standing: the left one with the yellow/ochre stripe is a young colony and will not be disturbed. The centre (white) one is the most productive and produced the bulk of the harvested honey from this year. Finally, the far right one (blue stripe) was a smallish colony and so I only took a small amount from them. So, there you are--the working girls in situ. The day before harvest day, I went out to the hives and placed a covering plank with a bee "outlet" device in it. That is the round thing that you see there in the bottom of the honey "room" (super). The way it works is ingenious: you place this in the hive between the honey box and the brood box. The worker bees will need to go below, and so they creep into the small opening and follow the channel around until they come to the exit... and down into the brood chamber they go. From here, they can eat, drink or leave the hive for a bit of a fly-about. The beauty is that for the first couple of days, they cannot figure out that they can creep back into that circular pathway and get back into the honey chamber. Eventually they will, but then I will have visited before that. As you no doubt have twigged, the idea is to get the honey room as bee-free as possible. This is to make transporting the full honey frame to a closed box for storage completely bee free.--You do not want bees in your house or auto. See what I mean? Moving along...I took all my frames for slinging over to my mentor and we spent the entire day slinging first my honey, then his. The foto's that follow will illustrate the procedure to a degree. The first foto shows me removing the caps from the honey comb so that the honey can easily sling out of the cells without breaking the comb. Here are my honey-filled frames, transported in hive boxes waiting to be centrifuged: Once the frame has been placed on the "cap removal box and stand", I can use my de-capping tool to slide along and flip the caps off. Next, the full frames must be lowered into the centrifuge. The process goes like this: First sling it like this, then turn the frame over (inside towards the outside); and finally, I flip it back the way that it was (outside back to the inside again). The centrifuge is stopped between the flipping. The slinging (centrifuging) begins, and look at this marvellous golden honey coming out of the bottom of the centrifuge: Before the honey goes into the storage vat, it is filtered with a double sieve. Once all the work has been completed, the vats are loaded into my auto and taken home, along with the slung-out honey frames. There is always a bit left in the bottom of the cells, so I put it out for my bees to lick clean before storing them for the winter. Once home, the vats are set aside and left untouched for three days to let the honey "ripen" and to let the bubbles and some pollen and wax bits float to the top. This is then skimmed-off right before filling the pots. Then the fun part: filling the honey pots. Once filled, the labels may then be applied.... ...and stored in small amounts in the honey closet. It is such a rewarding experience--winning honey, but I will tell you that the satisfaction that I get for caring for the bees is far, far greater. One man cannot save the plummeting numbers of bees alone, but I know that at least my bees are getting good care and have a very good chance of surviving.
Sjoerd, we will be harvesting honey within the next two weeks. I have the extractor set up in our kitchen (setting it up and getting all the equipment ready takes a while.) We have hopes of a good harvest this fall. Our honey goes to friends, we keep some for ourselves, and the rest is sold. We have a list of customers who really want local honey!
NETTY--Thank you so much. Keeping bees IS interesting. Yes, I sell the honey as well as give to some folks to which I cannot sell. MG--I hope that you have a really good harvest this year. You are right that it takes quite some time to set it all up...to break it down and wash it all off as well. I found that folks here really liked the idea of the honey coming from this area. The lottie members especially thought of it as having come (in part) from their own garden and would buy pots to give as gifts. Please write a little piece and post some foto's when you harvest honey, would you?
A very engaging process Sjoerd. And the honey looks so good! I like the reasoning behind the bee outlet device.
I didn't know our honey is strained and cleaned. I thought we got it right from the bees, without anyone doing anything.
Sojerd, if I can take photos and write an explanation of what we are doing, I will. Since there are only the two of us toting frames, extracting, and filling jars, the one with the less sticky fingers is in charge of the camera. If that is me, don't expect great photos!
S, The color of your honey fabulous! the lighter the honey the prettier I always think it is, but each to his own. Do you have a central extracting place that many people use or you rent to get your honey extracted? that was a nice setup for the honey strainer.
Yummm. Makes me want some honey now Wish you lived closer to me! lol I bought a lovely jar of honey at a farmers market last week. The guy had 2 colors of honey and I asked what the lighter one was made from and he told me it was Black Locust honey. Theres a grove of Black Locust trees a half mile from his hives. Unfortunately, his bees dont make it every year for whatever reason, so of course I had to buy a jar of it cause it may not be there next time! Its delicious! I have been wanting some honeycomb very badly, but for some reason, its very hard to find around here!
Absolutely fascinating. We love local honey too.My husband likes it because it helps with his hayfever symptoms,me,I love it for the flavour. I'd love to have bees but in the meantime I'll have to do with looking at your posts. Years ago when we were on holiday in Provence we bought some local honey in a market.I don't think he double-strained it as we found quite a few legs and bits of wings in it Still,it tasted wonderful! I sincerely hope you have your bees for many years.
Jen, You are correct, black locust honey is one of the nicest (in my opinion) honeys to be had. I have only harvested it once in the 15 years I have had bees. Comb honey is hard to find because it takes away all the foundation that the bees built this year into comb and they have to start over again next year with new foundation. For every pound of wax it takes 5 pounds of honey to make make it. this is why we uncap the comb and extract the honey. Next year we put the already made comb ( what we really call it is drawn foundation because the bees draw out the wax to make the comb. All we put in the frame is a sheet of flat wax imprinted with the cell shape to give the bees a place to start and keep it uniform so we can extract it later) ) back on the hive. Or if there is a bee keeper who has the art of harvesting comb honey mastered some use special equipment to make and harvest it. The foundation for cut comb honey is different than the foundation we start with for extracted honey foundation.
Thanks FRANK--The bee outlet is indeed clever, isn't it. Hey WARE--Yes we strain it because with the slinging, there can be bee body parts, wax flakes or other bits of debris. Oké MG--With drips all over one's hands and fingers(in spite of frequently licking them). Hiya C--I am glad that you like the looks of the honey. It is primarily Lindeboom along with diverse flower sorts. A linde is is called a "Lime Tree", I believe. No we do not have a central place to sling our honey. I did it with my mentor over at his home. Thank you BIP-- It would be great if you lived closer and could sample this honey. Some beekeepers sell jars with comb in it, but there is not asked for often. No one asked me for some. There is no asking and the folks who do make comb honey use special frames which allow the bees to make all of the comb themselves and when time comes to harvest it, it can be neatly cut off the frame. It is a bit involved. Carolyn addressed your comments well. Thanks KK. I wish that you could keep them too. I am sure that you would enjoy it very much. Thank you very much, KM--There were several customers that bought my honey for exactly the same reason that your man eats it. I do not know if it helps or not, but I certainly understand the proposed process of how it COULD help. I know that there in Britain there is a great campaign going on at the moment whereby folks are urged to keep bees in the cities--"urban beekeeping". I am glad that you enjoyed this posting, CHERYL.
Wow Bees and Honey. I always fancied having some bees around. But I think it's some work involved, I don't have time and don't want to burden my parents even more. But it would be cool!
