Harvesting Honey

Having decided that we had some spare honey to remove from the hive our thoughts turned to the processes involved – all new territory for us. A quick trip to Stockbridge meant we increased our beekeeping equipment holdings and that we now had everything we needed with the exception of the extractor. Luckily the local association has several and we were fortunate enough to be given a 24hr window over a weekend (No pressure then!)

A warm sunny afternoon allowed me to insert the clearer board with newly fitted porter escapes and I decided that I would return 48hrs later. Returning then it became abundantly clear that the bees were less welcoming than normal as I could hear the hum from some 20m away which is very unusual for my well mannered brood. Nevertheless they were still well mannered and the supers were clear of bees. I was surprised at just how heavy 2 full supers are and I was glad that the car was close. Returning home the kitchen was arranged with military precision as I had read with great humour the account in Bill Turnbulls book about honey extraction and I had no desire to have sticky floors, walls and clothing.

The planning worked and the process worked well, a few small blobs of honey escaped but nothing of any significance.  Pretty soon all the frames worthy of extraction had been emptied of their honey and the wax cappings had all been placed in a roasting tray for melting. Leaving the honey to settle in our new honey tank we scrubbed out the extractor using cold water as suggested and it worked a treat.

We had expected to get maybe a dozen jars from this extraction but as we started to fill the jars it became clear that this life changing experience was going to yield far more than a dozen.  In fact we filled the entire 32 jars and had a small bucket of honey left over for me to experiment with to try to make soft set honey – but that’s another story.

And of course we needed to replace the supers, 1 for them to clean out and 1 to fill the frames that we had extracted. My intention is to feed them shortly to help them get ready fro winter; my inspection as I replaced the supers showed that the queen was very active and the colony had 7 frames covered in brood of all stages and the remaining frames bulging with stores so I am content at the moment.

Although we have enough offers to take the current crop of jarred honey off our hands it has made us think about next year.  I intend changing the Nationals to 14x12 hives and I suspect that the colony will do much better so we clearly need to sort out the realities of potentially producing 100 jars of honey. Do we want to join the other beekeepers at the farmers market or shall we go elsewhere ….