10/16/10: Honey Removal and First Extraction

Conditions: Sunny, 58F
Present: Bud F. and I
Equipment: No changes.
Activities: Smoked hives about 11:30 am. Inspected super frames for capped honey.
Observations:

New Hive: Took about 5 more frames of capped honey. All dark honey.

Old Hive: Took an entire super of capped honey. Some of this is fall honey that was light in color, which is surprising. Vast majority was dark honey.

I did not observe any varroa in either hive, though we didn't go down lower than the supers. This is still surprising given the time of year and the fact I have not done any treatment this year (did powdered sugar last year).

A combination of 10 shallow frames were removed from a the hives on 9/30/10 and stored in a large rubbermaid tote. An additional 19 frames were removed the morning of 10/16/10 (frames that were full on 9/30/10, but drying and largely uncapped). All 29 frames were extracted in about 3.5 hours with two people working (though who did the work traded off a bit)

We set up the extractor on a raised platform of cinder blocks and a wood pallet. The extractor was placed on (and later anchored to) the pallet. We allowed the honey to freely drain from the extractor into an intermediate pail from which we dumped the honey into a nylon strainer (course filter). The filtered honey was stored in 8 gallon pails with lids, one each of light and dark honey.

We used a combination of electric uncapping knife and serrated bread knife stored in hot water to uncap on a baking tray, with capping wax/honey stored in a separate bucket for later separation.

It was a blast! The boys (3 and half) even took their turns spinning honey in the extractor.

Lessons Learned (and tips for next year):

1) There are lots of sticky jobs during extraction. A tip I read to keep a bucket of warm water around to rinse your hands or tools was VERY useful. Next year I think I'll do two, one for the majority of the honey and a "second" that just gets the sticky honey water from the first off.
2) The honey will spill and drip. Cover with newspaper all high traffic areas BEFORE starting. This includes around the extractor, uncapping area and work surfaces, and the pathways from uncapping to extractor and from extractor to filter bucket.
3) The extractor sometimes gets off balance and shakes or tips. Screw it down BEFORE you spin anything.
4) Lots of bees tried to get in. We placed a fan in the window on the edge of the building to blow the honey smell in one direction. The bees gathered outside of that window instead of all over the outside of the honey house, including the door where we occasionally needed to exit and enter through. This worked really well.
5) We killed any bees we found in the shed. Sorry ladies, but this was surplus honey and we weren't going to give it back. I was not concerned about a few bees in the honey house so much as a few scouts telling the whole hive the secret to how to slip in and out of the honey house where "the motherload" was hidden.
6) We extracted on a day that is not hot, but warm enough for bees to fly. This meant any bucket, tray, knife, frames, etc that we were no longer needing could just be placed outside for the bees to clean up, which they did eagerly.

Our yield was approximately 65 pounds of honey, 20 light "spring" honey (very fragrant) and 45 dark "fall" honey (mellow and rich). We let it rest 24 hours for bubbles to settle out. I began bottling last night with a ladel and funnel. Next year a bottling bucket with a honey gate valve would be a nice addition, especially if we do lots of little bottles for sale. This harvest will be enough to split with Bud and hopefully get us to the next harvest. I think we'll be increasing the number of hives and might try our hand at marketing some honey. There are a number of neighbors, co-workers, and farmers who have expressed interest in buying our honey.

10/25/2009: Hives re-opened for business!

Conditions: Sunny, 65F
Present: Just me
Equipment: Entrance Reducers
Activities: Re-opened the hives after relocating yesterday. Added hive-top feeders with sugar syrup containing Pro-Health (essential oil feeding supplement) and Fumagillin B (for Nosema treatment).
Observations: We lucked out that the weekend turned out to be so nice and warm. Observed happy bees flying!

Next check in will likely be in the spring. Good luck little ladies! Stay warm and healthy all winter and I'll see you in the spring!

10/24/09: Relocating the Bees!

Conditions: Overcast, ~60F
Present: Bud F. and I
Equipment: Entrance blocks (for moving)
Activities: Relocated Hives from Strongsville, OH to Richfield, OH

Friday we sealed up the hives as it got dark. We removed the pail top feeders, blocked the entrances with wood and polyester fiber fill (pillow stuffing), and applied two ratchet straps to each hive. We bound the bottom board, but not the hive stand to keep things tighter. Bud kept the sealed hives in his truck overnight and drove them to the new apiary, my new house, on Saturday morning. Here's a sealed up hive:

Buckled down, loaded and moved. The taped upper entrance is coming undone and a few bees escaped right before unloading, but it was no big deal. Here we are unloading from Bud's truck.

Here we are unbuckling and removing the scrap wood we used as handles.

Here we are all settled. We left the hives sealed up another night due to all the jostling.

Welcome to your new foraging grounds, bees! This is the view to the new house.

6/29/09: Fifth Inspection

Three weeks since we were last in the hives.

Conditions: Cloudy, threatening rain, 78F
Present: Bud F. and I
Equipment: Added first supers on top of the lower deeps for both hives. Removed tape from additional entrance holes in the deeps. Removed one frame of "old comb" that had lots of drone larvae from the Russian colony.
Activities: Smoked hives about 5:30pm. Inspected all frames.
Observations: Both hives were doing very well.
Italian: Observed lots of comb in the Italian colony, all frames built out except the wall side of one of the wall frames. These bees had built a lot of comb since the last inspection and were running out of room! One supercedure queen cell and 7-8 swarm queen cells noted. These were removed to prevent swarming and the supers were added. Glad we did not delay inspection any further as they could have swarmed, and a swarm this late in the year would be bad news. Hopefully the increased space and loss of the existing queen cells will prevent an Italian swarm. My one concern is that we did not see the queen. If the queen is dead or gone and we destroyed the queen cells designed to replace her, that would be bad. This seems unlikely, though. As the inspection went on, the colony got more and more agitated. A small amount of royal jelly was collected from the torn down queen cups. It tastes sour and buttery. Not all that yummy, really.
Russian: Comparitively less comb than the Italian colony, but still only approximately 1 frame to fill and obviouly still building comb. Lots of textbook brood pattern seen on many of the center frames. Looks like a good queen who had a little bit of a late start, maybe due to her being Russian. The colony was quite docile throughout the inspection. Quite a few drones in this colony, probably due to the old comb, some of which had damage and was previously chewed out and replaced with the larger drone comb cells. One frame had an excessive amount of drone larvae and was removed and replaced with a frame with empty plastic foundation. This will help with mite control if varroa are now present, but mostly it's to keep the drone population down as the queen would just lay more drones in this frame in the future. We'll get a small amount of honey from this, enough for just a taste, before allowing the bees to clean it up a few hundred feet from the hive. Setting it at a distance will allow the bees to remove the honey and nectar via foraging and hopefully prevent any robbing.

6/6/09: Fourth Inspection

Conditions: Sunny, 74F
Present: Bud F. and I
Equipment: Removed entrance reducers on the Russian hive (removed from the Italian hive last week).
Activities: Smoked hives about 3:30pm. Inspected all frames.
Observations: Observed additional drawn comb. Not much has changed since the last inspection. Did not spot the queens, though lots of capped brood was evident. We should be to the point where all the bees in the colonies are the offspring of the reigning queen and were born in the hive where they now live, not back at the bee farm. In order to let them work and not slow them down, the next inspection will be 2-3 weeks from now.

4/27/09: Initial installation (Strongsville, OH)

Conditions: Sunny 65F
Present: Bud F. and I, Annie on the videorecorder
Equipment: 2 plastic hives w/ plastic bottom boards on wooden hive stands, elevated on angle iron and cinderblocks. Bud had the equipment after storing for 12 years and cleaned it up for this season. Each colony got some old comb (2 frames for the Italians, 3 frames for the Russians) and all empty frames were new w/ plastic foundation. We loaded the comb as much as we could with sugar syrup and placed pail feeders on top the inner covers. Each colony got 1 pollen patty. Entrance reducers were used, limiting the entrance to about 4” and half of full height. Got to test my new bee jacket/hood unit, which worked great.
Activities: Picked up bees from T.B. Jeffries at 11am. Installed both queens in cages with candy and all bees at 2:30pm. This went very smoothly. We followed the instructions in “Beekeeping for Dummies” as Bud had never installed packaged bees before.
Observations: The colony with the Italian queen was much more active with many more bees flying and coming and going from the hive entrance. Noticed all the attendants (5 or 6) in the Russian queen cage were dead, but the queen was alive and active. The Russians were much more reserved, which may be due to extra sugar syrup spraying immediately before hiving. Great weather and a great first time handling bees. No stings until I was gathering up equipment and smashed a bee between a bee brush, a hive tool, and my ungloved hand.