The Big Spin

So after hauling the honey-filled frames into the garage, the next step is to scrape or cut the wax caps from the frames of honey.

I used an electric bee-knife that uses a mild heat to quickly melt through the wax caps to expose the honey inside.

This time, I used the old fashion kitchen-fork method. I simply scraped the wax with a fork to expose the honey.

After that, I loaded the frames into the extractor. This extractor holds 6 frames at a time, and as it spins the honey collects on the stainless steel sides and flows out the honey gate to be filtered.


Here is the site that every beekeeper loves to see...the honey!!

This time, I got almost 6 gallons of honey. The color was quite a bit lighter than the last harvest, but still tasted extremely fresh. The main blooms continued to be Tulip Poplar trees and blackberrie bushes, along with holly and the full range of spring flower blooms.

The 2nd harvest

When I looked last week, I noticed that the bees have been VERY busy. They had filled up the previously emptied supers in a few short weeks. With the main nectar flow coming to an end, I decided to harvest them once more.

My oldest daughter Abby has been interested in the bees, and she helped me this time. Her job was to help keep the bees settled by smoking them with pine straw smoke.

So here we are taking some frames of capped honey out of the first hive.

In total, we took out about 24 frames from both hives, and this yieleded almost 6 gallons of fresh pure honey!

The bees in the first hive were very calm, and the first hive was easy to harvest. I noticed there were almost 2x the bees in the first hive as in the second hive. They both looked good and healthy, but just lots more bees in the first hive.

Here is a closeup of the frame of capped honey just after I took it out of the hive.

The next step is to use a soft brush, and softly brush the bees off of the frame and back into the hive body. This is when the bees tend to get a pit upset!

Once I brushed all the bees off, I put the frames into a covered box so bees don't get back onto the frame. I then collect all the frames from the hives, and haul them into the garage so I can start the extraction process.

Honey for sale

Great news!

Harmony Farms is now selling our Honey. They offer a large selection of health foods. Their web site is http://www.harmony-farms.net/ and directions to their store (and the honey) can be found at http://www.harmony-farms.net/directions.html.

Tulip Poplar

The Tulip Poplar is the major nectar source in this area of NC during May. Other sources during May include Blackberry and Holly.

The Honey Harvest

We had an early harvest of 28 frames of capped honey on 4/17/2006.

On the two hives, we had a total of 6 supers. Each hive had about 2 supers
drawn out, and one was just foundation.

I used the loaner 6-frame Dadant electric extractor and electric knife from
the Wake County Beekeepers Association, and extracted the honey on 4/21/06.

The steps of the process included:

• Around 5:00pm, open the hives and take out the frames which have white-capped honey
• Brush off the bees from each frame, one by one.
• Place the bee-free frames in a covered tupperware tub
• Close up the hives
• Bring the frames into the Garage
• Set up the extractor, decapping knife, buckets and wet towels
• Use the decapping knife to remove caps. Catch the caps into a tupperware to harvest the wax later.
• Place the frames in the extractor as soon as they are de-capped.
• Place the 5-gallon bucket with nylon strainer. Make sure the honey-gate is closed on the bucket.
• Ran the extractor (6 frames) for about 10-12 minutes to get all the honey out. Make sure the honey-gate on the extractor is open, to allow free-flow into the bucket with strainer.
• Remove the drained frames from the extractor, and repeat till finished.
• When all done, I took extractor and tupperware tubs to car-wash and hit with hot water (no soap) to clean up everything.
• The next morning, place frames back in hive so bees can fill back up.
• Maybe took 3 hours end to end.
  

This harvest resulted in 5 Gallons of honey. This was mostly from Tulip Poplar, blackberry and holly, and it's dark and clear.
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My two hives are located on my property in North Raleigh, near the intersection of Creedmoor and Norwood.

I only use small amounts of smoke when I work the hives, and only use pine-straw as my fuel source. (I'm trying to find a source of cured tobacco leaves, as I hear they may help control the varooa mites)

The bees are all from Italian queens supplied by NC State bee keepers program.

I keep a local water source in my garden so the bees always have water to cool their hive all summer.

The hives were started in May of 2005. I let them build up their honeycomb during that year, and they had good honey going into the fall of 2005. I did not harvest that year, to give them a good over-winter supply of honey.

With the mild winter we had, the bees got off to a great, early start this spring, and resulted in an April 2006 harvest.

More honey is expected in late May/early June.