Honey Harvest

I've been a much more passive beekeeper this year than last year. Since my remaining colony always looked very busy this summer as I watched it from my kitchen window or up close (as long as I stand out of the flight pattern of the coming-and-going bees they pretty much ignore my presence) I only bothered them to refill their water feeder when it was empty for the past six weeks.  So I had no idea what I would find before my friend Jill and I opened up my hives yesterday. 

An amazing spider we found in our yard. Its abdomen is the size of my thumb.

I didn't get pictures on my camera of what we discovered inside the hive. My daughter Bronwyn got a couple on her camera and I'll try to get them to post later. So here is the honey report:

Top honey super: Nothing. No comb drawn. A few bees loafing around, but nothing else.

Lower honey super: Most frames at least had comb drawn on them, but only two in the middle had much capped honey on them. The last time I had checked the hive there had been palm-size patches of stored pollen, but those were gone. I wonder if they had moved the pollen down into the brood chamber. We took the two frames that had some capped on honey on either side.

I decided to at least check the upper brood chamber to see what activity was going on there as long as I was in the hive. When we popped off (literally! The bees had done an excellent job of gluing it down with propolis -- the notorious bee glue) the queen excluder -- used to keep the queen out of the honey supers -- the upper brood chamber was loaded with bees, brood, and most importantly, honey. What was most surprising to me was seeing a beautiful brand new section of honey comb filling the space left by an empty frame slot. The comb was just like its own frame in length and width. It was a pretty off-white color and loaded with honey. In fact, two frames on each side of the brood box were filled with nothing but capped honey, and the next frames in were entirely honey on one side and some brood with lots of honey on the other. This is the time of year when the queen slows down her egg laying to prepare for winter, so as the amount of brood decreases the bees will backfill those empty brood cells with honey for their winter stores. 

I decided to take one frame of honey from there. Jill had one full frame of honey to add to my meager harvest. Once we cut the caps off with a hot capping knife Liam helped Jill spin the the frames in the extractor -- a giant centrifuge:

 Here's what has fallen into the pan after slicing off the wax caps. The lighter yellow stuff is wax. There is a fair amount of honey in there too. The capping knife got too hot and started to burn the wax and honey a bit. I got about 1/4 cup of honey out of this pan.

Now we filter the honey as it pours out of the extractor into ice cream buckets topped with cheesecloth. Jill said she tried using tulle this year as the straining material and really liked how well it did and how easily it cleaned up. Tulle would certainly be easier to find! I had to ask a WalMart associate for help to locate cheesecloth and we tried several departments before finding it in the craft department.

Look at how dark the honey is this year. Last year's honey was quite a bit lighter. We thought it had a lot to do with the drought, which influenced what managed to bloom.

Jill and I tilted the big extractor on its side in my sink to try to catch the last dregs of honey that wouldn't make it out of the spout. It is propped up on several dish towels, braced against the center divider of my sink. To speed things up I brought my blow dryer down to blow on the metal drum to heat it up and make the honey run faster. Surprisingly enough, it actually helped!

Even so, Jill grabbed a rubber spatula and scraped down the sides and bottom to get as much as possible. She got at least another half cup out of the extractor. I helped by scraping my fingers along the bottom and licking them. The honey this year has a warm, rich taste to it. I couldn't identify any particular flower flavor. It's a nice blend. I ended up with approximately an ice cream bucket of honey.