Pale golden honey

On December 15 we had an opportunity to get out and harvest some honey from our hives so we went for it.

It's been raining here pretty much all year - I'm not joking!

Miserable for us stuck inside and miserable for the bees too I imagine. The rain washes the nectar and honey from the hives and they just don't get the runs of fine days to work their magic.

But the break in the weather gave us the chance to harvest many kilograms of honey from their hives and still leave plenty for them.

We used the plastic tub again with the lid on it to move the frames from the hives inside for spinning and that worked really well. With two people you can keep the bees out, which makes the whole process so much more pleasant.

You can see the fully laden frames - with all the cells capped.

On the left is our other batch of honey - this is a very diverse blend from our permaculture garden with honey from vegetables, flowers, herbs, fruit and nut trees, legumes, ground covers and much, much plus the added bonus of the surrounding rainforest and bush.

On the right we have honey that is predominantly from the Mexican Tree Fern. Its much lighter (this batch still needed to sit for a while to settle) and the taste is lighter too.

And here is our wonderful bargain hand spun extractor - working a treat.

cheers,

Sonya

The Novice Beekeeper

Finally - a bumper harvest this week!

Finally we've had some clear weather to get out and harvest some honey from our hives.

It's been a pretty miserable winter for the Sunshine Coast, lots of rain and when it wasn't raining it was either overcast or windy - or both. None of it good for beekeeping.

I have been keeping myself busy though making soaps and I even made some honey soap. A basic soap mixture with raw honey added.

It gave the soap a very natural colour (that's cacao in those lines through the soap) and it smell of honey - very delicious and with extra butters and oils added, it will be lovely and creamy too and good for our skin.

Since I last posted we did have a swarm in our backyard which we endeavoured to capture.

We didn't have a nuc box ready to go, so we got busy making one (they come in flat packs from the suppliers)

Here it is finished but unpainted.

But unfortunately the swarm had moved on before we got to it. Oh well, we're prepared now for the next time we find one.

This week though, we were able to get out and harvest honey. We've been checking the hives in between times and maintaining the small hive beetle traps, but we just haven't had the time to do a proper job of extracting the honey and the frames hadn't been full enough either.

Here is our first frame of the day being uncapped. We use a steam knife attached to a pressure cooker on the stove to cut the caps of the cells of honey.

And this time we tried something different to bring the frames in from the hives to the house.

Normally beekeepers put a super box (just one of those white boxes you see on beehives) in a wheelbarrow and move the full frames in that with a lid on.

Problem is, as soon as you move a frame from the hive you either get bees from that hive following you wanting their honey back, or you get robber bees chasing you wanting the honey.

Putting the super in a wheelbarrow left a lot of gaps underneath for bees to get in to the box and you end up with frames with still quite a few (angry by this time) bees on them when you bring them inside.

This is when you're most likely to stung - and you don't want bees around you when your extracting the honey as you usually have your safety gear off by then.

So instead, we put our frames in a plastic storage tub with a lockable lid. We brushed the bees off and quickly got the bee-free frame in the box and shut the lid. We did this for all six frames and it worked a treat.

We were able to bring the frames inside with no bees on them at all, making it nice and safe for us and no bees suffered in the process either.

Here you can see a small hive beetle trap on the left placed in the honey super of the hive. These seem to be working very well. We've had the hives for nearly a year now and despite the rubbish weather, the beetles haven't got out of control.

Another shot of the busy bees. All the native plants we put in as bee forage plants are doing really well too. In a couple of years we'll have flowers, nectar and pollen on tap all year round for them.

And here's the stored honey. We have two of these honey pails full of yummy honey. Around 40kgs in total.

Now we have a day of sterilising jars, decanting the honey into the jars, labelling and storing them for the next local market.

Cheers,

Sonya

The Novice Beekeeper

Our second honey harvest

We took advantage of a rare fine day this week to harvest honey from our remaining hives.

Looking left to right in the photo ABOVE we have hives 1-4. Numbering hives and keeping good records of hive health and vitality and harvest is important.

Hive 1 showed a lot of activity, the bees were fiesty, very active and noisy. We harvested four frames from that hive and extracted probably around eight kgs of honey.

While we had the hives open we checked the small hive beetle traps and topped them up with Diatemaceous Earth. We saw a few beetles but the traps seem to be keeping them in check. We also cleaned up the hives as best we could removing built up wax on the tops of frames using a new paint scraper bought for the job.

You can see the hive activity in the image below and you can see the black trap between the frames to the right of the box.

We also took four frames from Hive 2, which in contrast was quiet, happy and cooperative, but still very strong with loaded frames heavy with honey. You need to be pretty fit and strong to keep bees, it's heavy work. We harvest probably 12kgs of honey from those four frames. Giving us a total of 20.5kg from one harvest of two hives.

ABOVE - here is our capping set up - frames are rested on the wooden bar across the top (as you can see in the photo BELOW) - and using a hot knife, the caps are removed to allow the honey to flow.

You can also see in the image BELOW that almost all of that frame is capped. Any frame with three quarters or more of the cells capped can be taken for harvesting. You can also see how the frame rests on a screw on that wooden board allowing you to keep it in place using just a couple of fingers while you use the hot knife to take those caps off.

We are only taking four frames from each because we don't want to strip the hive of honey - its the bees' food - and we need to keep the frames in even numbers as our extractor BELOW needs two frames at a time to work.

The extractor worked really well, but doing it by hand is hard work.

Today we went to our first meeting of the Sunshine Coast Beekeepers Association - which is a really well attended vibrant group by the way - and we saw one of these extractors set up with a motor - great idea!

And here is our bounty - 20.5kg of honey settling for a few days before bottling up.

We will endevour to set up a regular maintainence program for our hives and keep an eye on them.

Cheers,

Sonya

The Novice Beekeeper