Let the Honey Flow!

Hello, Beelicious Readers!

Our bees were pretty busy this last month making some serious honey in the honey super. We hadn't thought our girls would have enough honey to share with us this year as it's the first year in their home. We wanted to make sure they had plenty to eat over Winter before we took any honey from them. Well, the girls made a bunch of honey and we were able to take some of the surplus. How did it go? Well, let's get started!

We had a big harvesting day at Tim's. Tim had 5 honey supers to harvest, plus he had two friends come by to harvest their boxes as well. We spent over three hours uncapping the frames, testing the honey using a refractometer, loading and unloading the honey extractor and changing out the buckets for bottling. 

Our uncapping station

Honey extractor

Stack of boxes of empty frames

I love Tim's new art on his hive boxes. I created a "Tim Bee" for his honey labels. One of his friends is an artist and took the bee I made and put them all over his boxes. They are really cute!

Super cute, right?

After everyone took their honey and left, Tim, Al and I got my honey super off of my hive and brought it into the garage. There were a lot of bees around with the smell of honey in the air so we decided to harvest inside the garage. We put it on the table so I could check the individual frames before harvesting. 

Once I pulled out each frame to inspect them, each frame was full of honey, but only about 50% of them were capped. Once the bees cap each cell of a honey frame, you can bet that the moisture level of that honey is around 18%. You definitely don't want honey with a moisture level over 20% or it's on its way to fermenting. So instead of bottling directly from the hive, we decided to let the honey flow into a bucket so we could measure the moisture content before we bottled it. 

So how did it go? Well, check it out!

And, as promised, full disclosure, the flow frames leaked. A lot. We only opened two frames and the honey was leaking onto the table like crazy. We decided to close the frames so that I could take it home to make a mess in my own house. After discussing this issue with the Flow people and other beekeepers who use this harvesting method, it was discovered that when the bees do not cap the cells you are opening with the hive key, honey will leak over the sides of the cells and down the frame, which creates the puddles of honey underneath. The second harvest is generally much smoother as the bees seal them better as well. Next season, it should be better, so stay tuned...

What to do with a honey super you don't want making a mess on your kitchen counter? Put a dish rack tray underneath it! GENIUS! So we have a dish rack tray that has a hole which allows the water to drain toward your sink. I just used this methodology to let the honey flow into a bucket so we didn't lose any of it. You know what? It worked like a charm! Let's watch together! 

Ok, how cool is that?! We ended up testing each frame of honey with our refractometer and our honey was at 18.3% and absolutely delicious! The girls just hadn't had a chance to cap it. They did such a great job! It was incredibly exciting to finally be able to bottle our very first jar of our girls' honey. Being a beekeeper is so dang cool!

Once our bucket was full, I bottled all of our honey and we were able to harvest 29 pounds! It was a beautiful amber color.

Golden nectar!

Unbelievably, we have sold all of it already! We took a few jars for ourselves, but there were many folks who had placed orders which were filled immediately. We had a slew of very happy customers.

After all of this harvesting, Tim gave me another couple of pounds of wax so I could continue to make candles and lip balm. I know I talked about the candle making, but the lip balm has been a very popular item as well.

Bauden's Beelicious Balm

I have made both peppermint and cherry lip balms. It's a pretty even match on which people like the most. I've found an imitation Burt's Bees formula of coconut oil, shea butter, beeswax and organic peppermint oil or organic cherry oil. It's been so fun to make!

To say I've learned a lot this year would be a major understatement. Most of all, I've had a ball! Learning about honeybees is an ongoing event. There is always something new to learn with them. The cleaning of beeswax and using that wax for candles and lip balm has been amazingly fun. 

I have opened an Etsy shop to sell our honey, candles and lip balm. A huge thank you to everyone who has placed an order already. I've had such a good time making these things and am thrilled others have enjoyed them too. If you have a moment, please check it out!

Beelicious ByProducts from the Beehive!

Next stop is getting our girls ready for Winter. I'm heading over to Tim's this week to do mite counts, check brood frames, honey frames and overall health of our girls. I'll make sure to document all of that for you. This year has gone so fast, but what a year it has been!

Until next time, bee kind! 🐝