The First Honey Harvest
Monday, October 8, 2012
Once again, the greatest of plans turns out not so great when I'm involved. I found this more natural method of removing the bee's from the honey supers. It is suppose to cause less duress and seemed simple enough. You remove the honey supers and set them within a close proximity of the hive. You place a lid with this "witch hat" exit tunnel on the top. The bee's do not sense their queen, so they exit out and can not get back in. It is suppose to take a few hours. So before the sun has risen and the morning was cold, we went into action.
While the supers without the queen sat waiting for the sun to rise & the bee's to exit, I made my way out to Wooster where the Honey extractor, I managed to borrow, was located. This thing was bigger then I thought it would be! It is also about 35 years old and in excellent shape.
I get back home after the 1hour drive each way to discover the bee removal method was not working as planned. There seemed to be a massive traffic jam in the cone. We could only find one veil and the Captain was too big for my suit {he has the strength to lift the box's by himself so he was the lucky party to deal with this part}. Being the Bee's were NOT happy at this point & I could not step outside without getting one caught in my hair, I took refuge in the house. Watching from the second story....
The Captain decided he would just brush off & smoke the bee's from EACH frame. Long story short, it worked but we did not start extracting until the dinner hour.
He transferred all the frames into a large cooler then smoked & brushed them off, placing them into a second cooler- closing the lid between each as to keep the bee's from getting back on.
I would then come out & empty the frames into a rubber maid container in the dining room where we were extracting. It took 4 trips but it worked. Many lessons learned.
Panda had friends who wanted to come over & help when we extract the honey {why would I say No to more help?}. So I made the rounds picking each of them up as soon as I got back with the extractor. I call her friends my Teen heathens. They think it's funny. Especially when I said was going to buy an old station wagon with the rear facing seat to haul all of them around. Complete with back window decal of "Heathen Taxi" just for them.
**If your ever in a store and hear "The Heathen children, your party is waiting at the front of the store"... that would be me... with teen heathens turned loose. Most likely in the toy department trying on Batman masks and riding toddler bikes yelling out "to the Bat mobile!" as they ride and dash in the aisles...{yes, i really do have them use the name "The Heathen Children" and the kids think it is hilarious I have them paged that way.}... True story. But let's move on.
The heated uncapping knife was a favorite amongst the Heathens. The rooms were enveloped with the scent of Beeswax and a fruity aroma of our honey. But I think they liked it being they could play with a burning hot knife & not get yelled at...
They honey harvest was very low this year. We managed to get just 5 gallons from 3 shallow Supers.Many frames were only half filled & capped. I think I know why but next year will help determine my suspicion on it. Hopefully next year it will be triple that.
I used a new tiny mesh hole hair cap, banded onto the bucket top for filtering out chunks of wax & bits of Bee's. Worked fantastic! No heating so it was slow and still made for RAW honey. Heating removes so much of the beneficial greatness one gets from raw honey. Although I did do this single filter method as it came out of the extractor, it is still considered raw. There simply was too much wax particles and bee parts not to do some filtering.
Each Heathen was sent home with a Pint jar of raw Honey for their help. We also ordered Romeo's Pizza which, having teen boy's, meant ordering far more then I normally would.
All in all, it was a fantastic time & between each boy bringing the quirks of their personality to the party, {barbie playing with Frog, keeping the laughter bouncing off the walls in our abode with goofy antics, & of course eating me out of house & home ~ including all of the Aldi's Nutella on animal crackers},it made for some great memories for each of us.
It appears as though the first Frost is this evening and my work at the Farm is at an end for the year. Good thing too. The Halloween costume orders are in & I have a short Masquerade gown to whip up as well as a Morticia & beheaded Lurch the butler costume to be complete in 3 weeks.
Now off to hop the thrift stores for old formal gowns I can transform & a suit befitting a Statuesque Butler.
Wishing you all...
Sweet Autumn Dreams,
~Tammie
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