Honey Extraction Day with Tim & Friends

Hey guys! Today was a very fun day. I learned so much! 

Tim had 5 shallow honey supers to extract. We had 50 full frames as all of them were capped and ready! He invited 3 of us to help with the process so everyone had to play a part. We had to keep the garage door closed as some bees had discovered our hide out and wanted to check us out a little too closely!

There were two people in charge of uncapping the frames with a scratcher.

This is what a wax scratcher or fork looks like. It is one way to uncap the honey frames. There are also hot and cold knives that you can use to remove the cappings (by cutting the caps off) before you put the frames in the extractor. 

This is Kevin removing the caps from a frame.

Sue was the other uncapper at the table today.

All of the wax cappings go into a strainer that will drain whatever honey is in them into a bucket.

These are two of the strainers.

Strainers that go inside bucket to drain honey from wax.

Strainers in the draining bucket

After the honey is drained, you're left with a bunch of wax cappings that can be cleaned and used for many things. I'm going to attempt candle making and perhaps lip balm! We'll see how that goes.

Drained wax cappings

So after Kevin and Sue finished uncapping the frames, Tim would put them into the extractor. It holds nine frames, but he preferred to put six in saying it pulled the honey better. Listen to Tim, I always say!

Three frames of honey in the centrifuge before extraction.

The honey that came out was incredibly delicious and really a great color. My job was bottling all of the honey! I had a great system and rhythm going that I only had about a tablespoon or so of honey that leaked from the gate. Our grand total from the 50 frames? 146 pounds! WOW! 

The golden nectar!

Everyone was so efficient with their roles, that we had all 50 frames extracted and bottled in 2 hours! All of us had a great time learning the process and gaining more beekeeping friends. It was such a great morning. 

If you're in the area and want some local honey, be sure to contact me. I'll hook you up with some of the best liquid gold around.

Until next time, bee kind! 🐝

A First with the Bees

Happy Monday, everyone!

Last week I had a very special guest in the bee yard with me. My sister Mary Ann came for a visit and had wanted to see the bees since we installed our package. She's been living vicariously through my blog and photo texts. I think she was more excited to see the bees than I was! And that says a lot! 

She saw the best in beekeeping and learned what happens when you don't follow the recommended steps of opening a hive. One of the first things we did was go into Tim's big hive. The first frame he pulled, had lots of brood on it and we were given a real treat.

We weren't able to see the entire birth because the frame was heavy and Tim needed to put it down. How cool is that though? If you look to the left of the frame toward the end, you can see a 2nd baby chewing her way out of her cell. It was an awesome thing to witness, especially for Mary Ann's first visit to see the bees!

Tim was kind enough to open the rest of his hives so she could see as much as possible in her visit. She lives in Texas so it's not so easy for her to come play with me and the bees.

Tim was not finding a queen in one of his hives that he'd just re-queened with a queen grafted from his big hive. It was a disappointing afternoon for sure, but the very next day, he said he reopened the hive and found a big yellow queen on the first frame with lots of eggs. He just had to give her another day to show what she's made of. Needless to say, I was thrilled for him that he didn't have to get another queen for that hive. He has a queen from fantastic stock that will do awesome work if she's anything like the queen who made her.

A view from inside the Flow super

We took a quick look through the observation window of my honey super. She LOVED looking through the window to see them working without having to bother them.

Now for the lesson of the day. ALWAYS follow the proper steps when opening a hive!

Because he's just that awesome, Tim made a ventilation/winter board (it would also give the girls an upper entrance) for my hive a couple days prior. So I brought it home and stained it then brought it with me to put on the hive. Well, I had it in my head that I just needed to pop it on the top of the hive and put the cover back on. I wasn't thinking of the steps in between to achieve that result. Mind you, the honey super is the top box on the hive, so when I opened the hive WITHOUT smoking the bees first, well, they ambushed me and with good reason. I got my very first sting, thankfully just on my knuckle through my glove. I had about 50 bees on my veil ready to get at me any way they could. It was not the smartest move on my part, but the girls instantly reminded me that I need to follow the proper steps before accomplishing my goal for the day.

I know I'll continue to learn from my mistakes, but it'll only make me a better beekeeper. I was thrilled my sister came to play with us and she loved every minute of it! How could she not? Bees are so cool!

Until next time, bee kind! 🐝

More Views from the Honey Super

Hey guys!

I ventured over to Tim's to check on my girls. Can I just say again how much I love the observation window on this honey super? It's the coolest feature! Check out their activity today!



Lots more girls in the side window! Woohoo!

However, most times, there are usually more bees in the center of the hive as they tend to work their way out from the middle.

With that in mind, I took off the back viewing window (where we will do the harvesting of the honey) and checked to see if there were bees in the middle. Last week when I checked there weren't very many at all.

This was my view from today...



A much improved viewing! There are so many more bees in there sealing the gaps and working hard on filling the cells. To say I was excited would be an understatement for sure.

I have run out of honey from our first extraction already! Seventy pounds GONE in less than two weeks. I'll be sure to let you all know when we have more to sell. It's amazing to have such fresh honey!

Until next time, bee kind! 🐝

Girls Working the Honey Super

Hi guys!

This is just a quick post to show what my girls are up to in the honey super! I installed the Flow™ frames (honey super) a week ago and after a couple days there were only a few in the box. I went back yesterday and saw this...

They are really starting to work the frames and I could not be happier. The observation window is probably my favorite part of this honey super. So cool to watch them work without disrupting them at all. I'll post again next week! Have a great weekend!

Until next time, bee kind! 🐝

Bottling the Goodness that is Honey

Hello beelicious viewers! I participated in the fun experience last Friday (the 8th) of bottling pure delicious honey for the first time. It's quite a process and even a little messy. The good thing is you can always lick your fingers! 

Tim had extracted 2 mostly full buckets with near 70 pounds of honey inside as you know. Well, I offered to bottle that honey since I know we'll have so much more to bottle in a month or so. We'll have lots of work to do once the remainder of the honey supers are pulled from the hives. I'll be sure to have a special honey extraction blog post during that event. 

Tim lined up some bottles in the kitchen and the buckets close to the sink. After awhile I had gotten into a good rhythm and bottled it all within an hour or so. 

The gate on the honey bucket controlled the flow of honey into the jars. When it would spill, well, we'd have to wipe it off with our hands. No need to use water when that would be incredibly wasteful. This was liquid gold, after all.

Look at that amazing color! Tim had never harvested so early before but the nectar flow is still good so they'll fill up the boxes again in no time. 

Meanwhile, back at our personal hive...

I went to grab a peek in the observation windows but there was less than a handful of bees in the honey super. I know I need to be patient because the girls are going to do what they want exactly at the timeframe of their choosing. They will let me know when they're ready to deposit honey.

However, when I went back yesterday (Tuesday the 12th) I took a peek in the honey super again to find more girls working and sealing up the cracks!

I sure hope the number of girls continues to increase over the next couple weeks while the nectar flow is strong. They've done an amazing job in their house so I know they'll do a fantastic job in the honey super as well. 

Have a wonderful day and until next time, bee kind! 🐝

It's a SUPER Kinda Day

Well, folks, today is the day! I'm calling it My Super Day! It started out like any regular day, I was sitting at the table eating my breakfast just minding my own business until I got a VERY important phone call. Tim called me and said, and I quote, "YOUR GIRLS ARE READY!" You may be asking, "ready for what?" Well, the answer is the most important thing ever, otherwise known as, ready to make honey! Needless to say, I inhaled the rest of my Di's Egg McSammich (it'll catch on) and headed over to Tim's. Yay!

3rd Brood Box was full and ready!

I got to Tim's and we did some last minute touch ups on the honey super. There was a little too much space on one end, so Tim added a shim to the side of the box and voila! The super is ready to go!

There are six Flow™frames in my super. Each frame holds 3kg or roughly 6.6 lbs of honey. 1 pound of honey is different than one pound of, say, water. One pound of water is 15.3 fluid ounces whereas one pound of honey is 11.3 fluid ounces. So one frame fills 74.5 fluid ounces of honey. Multiplied by 6, that's a lot of honey! Nice thing with the Flow™ is once we drain it and there is still a nectar flow on, they'll just chew off the wax cappings and start over and refill the cells.

Everything went quickly and easy as we just added it to the top of the hive. Once the roof was put on, I took a quick peek in the observation window and a few girls were already investigating the new frames. I'm beyond excited to look thru this window and watch them work.

It's been very hot and humid and I noticed the girls were bearding a bit on the front of the hive.

They needed more ventilation and more room. The honey super will help with space but then I removed the reducer to help with air flow. Hopefully these additions will help them stay happy in their home.

After we took care of my hive, we went to Tim's big hive and took the 4 honey supers off. After brushing bees out of the frames, we brought them inside his garage. He bought a new extractor to process honey at home instead of going to a friends with a truckload of honey frames. It'll make things so much easier for him since he now has 6 hives to harvest.

This is his set up in the garage.

The two buckets have gates on the bottom so you can bottle the honey as it pours from the bucket. The gate stops and starts the flow to make it easier in between jars. There is a strainer on top of the buckets to filter out bee parts, wax, and anything other than honey that you don't want in your jar. The extractor (the big steel drum looking thingy behind the buckets) holds 9 frames and should extract honey in about 10 minutes. 

Here is a closeup of the inside of the extractor.

If you put the frames along the triangle, three frames fit perfectly inside. After extracting 27 frames of honey, Tim got 70 pounds of honey! Fantastic, right? I'm so excited! 10 of the frames were not capped so they didn't get harvested. This means the bees did not put a wax capping on it so the moisture level is not right and therefore the honey is not ready. Honey should have around a 17% moisture level. The bees will fan the honey until it's just right, then cap it with wax.  That super will go back on the hive until the honey is ready. 

What a SUPER day! I'm excited that Tim's honey is ready on one of his hives and excited that we have a super on our hive. Our bees have enough honey stored for winter so I won't worry about them not having enough food. I'll check on them in a couple days to see how they're doing in the honey super. Having that observation window is going to make that really easy. And SUPER cool!

Until next time, bee kind! 🐝