Harvest

[alfred]

I harvested yesterday! Wow best year I have had since I started 4 years ago! I have 6 hives and I got about 7- 5gal buckets of honey and comb to strain. Don't know what it will yield yet in terms of clean honey and wax, but it is clearly way more than I have ever gotten in the past.

I did have some troubles. I a previous post I had told of how I simply take the buckets to the hives and scrape the frames right there. I use pf120's and foundationless. Well that works fine if you are only out there doing it for an hour or so but yesterday I was out there for 6 hours!! man am I beat today! Every thing was good for a while and then the girls started to get testy and then testier... By the time I was done, and I didn't want to stop, they were in a real uproar! I am afraid that I killed many just because of my being tired and sloppy by the time I was done. So I have to amend my opinion now. I will definitely use an escape and  then remove the supers to a remote location next year! What a mess! Even my next door neighbor got chased in his back yard... Hopefully today they will calm down.

Next comes straining and bottling all of that yummy honey! and then cleaning the wax and forming it into bricks. Now that it is all in covered buckets I can do that at my leisure.


I also took out my screened bottom boards and lowered the hives onto my solid boards, part of winter prep. I noticed that some of the hives were a little light in the bottom so as soon as they get done cleaning the scraped frames, which I stacked about 40 yards away, I will start to feed and do other winter prep.

I also saw a lot more brood than I was expecting to, but I am guessing that all is good. I will be checking in on them more thoroughly when I put on the feeders next week I think.

[AllenF]

Way to go.    :)

[L Daxon]

Wow.  I am jealous.  So much honey.  I got one super off my 1st year hive and will have that all given away/spoken for soon.  I hate the thought that it could be another year before I get to harvest/bottle again!!!!  It is so much fun to see in bottles on the counter what you have worked so hard for since spring.

I plan to have at least 3 hives next year (actually already have the second one up and running).  I am fighting the urge to have more hives (I know it is an addiction).  And the expense is keeping my growing urges in check.

Do you have an extractor or did you crush and strain?  Or combo of both?

[alfred]

I am using crush and strain. Which I haven't done yet the comb is just sitting in buckets right now. I have an extractor that I built using a food grade plastic barrel and bicycle parts but it needs some work and I decided not to use it.

This year 5 of the 6 hives I harvested from were new colonies. Three were from packages started in spring and two were from caught swarms. Only one was a hive that I had wintered over from last year.

Right now the girls are going to town on the cleaning up the empty frames. It is like a major feeding frenzy out there! Glad that I moved them away from the hives or I am sure I would have set off some serious robbing.

[alfred]

Finally got done straining and filtering the honey and wax. I ultimatly ended up with 206 lbs of honey and 13 lbs of wax! Yea!! I also got several lbs of pollen this year with just one trap that I moved from hive to hive. Next year more traps! I also got a little propolis but not much. Not sure why but even my most propylizingest (is that a word) hive did not want to put propolis on the trap.

Great year for me! Can't wait for next year. Boy do I have the bee bug bad....

[asprince]

Do you have a market for your honey? It is worth about $1200 in my area.

Good Luck!

Steve

[alfred]

Wow that is like $6 a pound?! I don't think that I could get that much for it here. I was thinking more like $4 a lb. But I will look around and see what the going price is here this year.

[AllenF]

4 to 6 bottled, retail, not bulk.

[asprince]

That is correct, I get $6.00 per pound bottled.

Steve

[Michael Bush]

If only there were an easy way, but alas, extracting is actually as much or more work...

[L Daxon]

There's work, and then there is "work."  Extracting is fun work cause you are seeing the fruits of all the other work you did earlier in the year.  .  .  .  .and you get to lick your fingers! :pinkelephant: