Have you noticed how heavy your frames and boxes are getting? We are at the peak of the honeyflow now. I will start robbing honey from the supers that don't have any brood in them today to get it extracted and to the market. Honey must be capped (sealed with wax) to be the right moisture content. If the honey is harvested before it is sealed by the bees the honey will tend to sugar (become granular) much faster. I plan on caging my queens in the next week or so. If you want to join me for this free demonstration for those who took my class, please email me at sciencebasedart@yahoo.com and let me know. I will email a confirmation to you with a date, time. I have seen many hives this summer and the best one was the O'Leary family's in Aurora Subdivision. For starting out with bare foundation, I was very impressed with the amount of drawn-out honeycomb, brood production and honey production. Having a Rubbermaid tote to store frames in during the harvest is vital. I put my tote anywhere from 10 to 20 feet from the hive, leaving the lid on. I rob one completely drawn-out and capped honey frame at a time using my bee brush to remove any lingering bees before placing the frame into the tote.
Rubbermaid Tote Image
If you need to rent my extractor please email me. It costs $25 per day and includes 3 decapping forks, 1 hotknife, 1 coldknife, 1 stainless steel double sieve (strainer), 1 - 5 gallon bottling bucket, and a long spatula. If you want to order bottles, now is the time to do so. I order mine from Dadant or Mann Lake Ltd.
Please don't hesitate to email me if you have any questions:
sciencebasedart@yahoo.com
thats some observation you have made
ReplyDeleteShinetay selling liquid honey from their extractors, as a new skill, had to struggle with this trouble until laws stopping the contamination were passed. Temporarily beekeepers had the benefit of using the honey extractor, which allowable recycling their searches.
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