After a few rough years, our girls are starting to settle in and make some honey. This year we brought in quite a bit more honey than we have in the last few years, and I thought it might be interesting to walk everyone through our process.
One of our hosted colonies just before harvesting
The first step was to harvest from our yards. We went to the remote yards, harvesting from our hosted colonies and bringing that in to the Bee Farm. We were able to bring in about 20 pounds of honey in from the remote yards.
The next morning, we went through all of the colonies at the Bee Farm, boxing the frames up so the bees would not be raiding the harvest and to prevent robbing behavior, as we still fave a few weaker hives that could easily be robbed out.
Uncapped frames
We would then bring in frames 4 at a time, uncapping them, and getting them prepped for the extractor. There are all sorts of tools that can be used for this, ranging from large combs to automated uncapping machines, but we rely on a small uncapping comb, a fork for corners that are not as pronounced as the main comb, and a spiky roller.
A couple of interesting frames waiting to be uncapped
We do not always get glamorous edge to edge frames, as you will see in the picture above, but the honey is still great!
Cappings being strained
The caps go into a sieve, to drain, as they still have quite a bit of honey in them. The honey will be added to the output of the extractor, and the wax will be added to the wax melter.
We are still very small, so we scrub down the kitchen, lay down a lot of craft paper, and roll in the extractor. We did upgrade this a few years back to a unit that is motorized and is able to take 4 frames at a time.
The honey drains through a couple of fine mesh strainers taking care of the honey from our remote yards and hosted colonies first and package up a few jars for our hosts. The rest of the remote honey and that from our yard get strained into holding buckets to fill orders on demand.
The soap wax melter
Some of the older comb is ready to be retired. Capings, old frames of comb and any broken comb (that extractor spins fast) are added to the solar wax melter.
The newly emptied frames still have a fair bit of honey in them, so they are placed back on the hives, where they will start filling them again to be harvested in the fall.
1/4 pound wax blocks
The wax was removed from the melter, strained and then poured into molds, in preparation to be sold. This was is great for candles, crafts, and cosmetic uses.
The next Friday, we went to the hosting sites, adding empty combs back onto the hives. We then did some mite treatments and put on feed in preparation for the summer dearth.
All in all, we harvested roughly 78 pounds of honey and 8 pounds of wax. Not bad considering the small start we had. We are very grateful to all of our friends, hosts and family for your support and encouragement.