Honey Harvest!

As a first-year beekeeper, it was definitely not an expectation to be able to harvest any honey, so it was thrilling to discover I would be able to pull off a few frames this month and still have plenty to leave for the bees to get thru winter.

In this post, I'm going to share the fun of this harvest with multiple videos capturing the process of getting to the good stuff!

Just to put honey production in perspective before I get to the videos, on average each full medium frame of capped honey (like in the picture above) weighs about 5 pounds total. To translate that into bee activity, it's estimated to take 556 foraging bees visiting 2 million flowers to make just 1 pound of honey, and one honey bee produces about 1/12^th of a teaspoon of honey in her lifetime. It gives you such an appreciation for the amount of collective work those ladies do, right?

A total of ~70 lbs of honey is needed for them for food over winter, and each medium super holds about 30 to 40 lbs of honey when each of the 10 frames is full.  Right now, for each hive, I have one fully filled honey super in addition to ~4  frames of honey in each of the 2 bottom brood boxes (~50 lbs of honey per hive).  And they are working on another super on top of the full one. Important to note, I stopped feeding the bees simple syrup (something you do to help a new colony get started) very early before I added the honey supers as they were doing just fine on their own - so I know my honey is just from natural sources.

So given that they'll still continue to fill frames before I close down the hives around November, I felt pretty safe pulling a few frames out for harvest. Another reason is that goldenrod is the primary source of pollen and nectar now and they are really bringing it in. I've heard that goldenrod honey can have a bitter smell and taste to it so I'd rather take the good tasting honey out now while I know its not goldenrod and let them keep storing the goldenrod honey for themselves.

The queen is laying eggs now for what will be my 'winter bees' (the frame in the picture shows a full frame of capped cells of baby bees).

And her crew is busy bringing in all kinds of white, yellow, and orange pollen to make food for the brood.  So they are busy doing what bees do.

Enough background.....let's get to the action!

This first video is the longest and shows what equipment I used and how to take the honey and wax off the frames. My son Daniel did a fantastic job helping me. Although, novice that I am, I've filmed all my videos with my phone upright (rather than landscape) so please excuse those annoying black bars on either side.  Future note for blog improvement!

Isn't it amazing to see all that honey goodness drip off those frames??  Even after I cleaned the frames with a rubber spatula (not in the video), there was even MORE honey just sitting in those empty cells.

As you could see, I was able to pull off 3 frames.  Normally for this amount, you could likely just use some kitchen equipment and cheesecloth and that would work fine. Next year, if I have what is expected, I will likely rent or borrow a honey centrifuge to 'spin out' the honey from the frames after uncapping into this tub, and the centrifuge will then drain into the white bucket the same way.  With this method I won't destroy the wax the bees have built and they can be even more productive getting back to work filling it back up rather than creating new cells.

In the next video, I show how the honey drains in the uncapping tank and some features of this particular tank which I ordered from Mann-Lake, a popular beekeeping supply company.  I've looked at a gazillion YouTube videos of various homemade improvised methods but in the end decided to invest in something helpful considering it will be used year to year.  I was able to obtain all my materials from Amazon so it's nice that a lot of these common beekeeping supplies are easily available.

After I thought the honey had sufficient time to drain down from the wire rack inside the tub, I basically tilted the tub to allow honey to flow into the finer filter. This fine mesh strainer also comes from a beekeeping supply company - it's adjustable to fit on top of any size container below and filters out even the smallest particles (1875 micron upper mesh and 650 micron bottom mesh). So in this next short video, you can see nice beautifully clean honey being captured in the 5 gallon bucket underneath.

Okay, I lied in this next video, it's really not the last one but I thought it was handy to show how easy this all was to clean up in case there are some other beekeepers out there considering whether to invest in this uncapping tub or not.  The other part of the video explains what I will do with the wax and cappings that still have a bit of honey in them before I can process the wax (which will likely be the subject of a future post).

And here it is! The final product.....I can't believe how much came out of just those 3 frames.  Basically each frame was a quart jar of honey, 3 lbs each!  It makes me a little scared for next year to think what quantities I will be dealing with if my bees do well and survive the winter.

Our honey color is a dark amber. Typically, darker honeys tend to be a little bolder and sweeter than lighter ones.  From what I understand, buckwheat, tulip poplar, and black locust are commonly found in our area and can all contribute to a darker honey. We live right down the road from Maple Acres Farm which grows several fields of 'pick your own zinnias' and typically wildflower honey is a lighter in color so I imagine ours is a likely a mix of all of the above. Darker honey contains more vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants so I'm happy with what I got! It will be interesting to see what honey is produced for our hives earlier in the year and if it will differ in color.   We'll see what happens I guess!

So that' it! Pretty amazing right??

It will be hard to wait until next year for another harvest. But first things first, I need my bees to survive the winter to be able to create the sweet stuff.  Fingers crossed!