Monday, October 22, 2012

2012-09-01: The Harvesting

The long awaited day had arrived and the honey was be extracted!
I arrived at my parents in the morning and went to work.  The one way escape boards worked like a charm.  However I had several other hives that had supers that needed the bees vacated.  I was going to do them when I came back to the house for lunch.
I took the frames from Orange and Blue (which had had the escapes) and brushed away the few remaining bees.  I loaded them into the car and drove them over to my mentor’s.  Several hours were spent uncapping and spinning the frames.  Below is the extractor with honey coming out and running through a screen.  You can also see hose wrapped around it.  Hot water is pumped through that to keep the walls of the extractor warm so that the honey will run off of it quickly.
2012-09-01 13.50.06 Extraction Day 
I went back to my parents and worked on placing the one way boards underneath the supers.  I then applied a chemical that is supposed to repel the bees and thus accelerate their evacuation of the supers.  I then had lunch.  Unfortunately for me, it did not work as well as I had hoped.  Many bees were still on the frames.  Much brushing and shaking of (the very irritable) bees later I loaded them onto the back of the truck (all the better to try to get rid of bees) and drove to my mentor’s place.  He then blew the remaining bees off with a leaf blower.
The remaining frames were extracted and at the end of a long day I had several buckets with around a hundred pounds of honey.  Not too bad!
Next year, more one way escape boards.  Setting them up 2 days in advance meant the supers were virtually bee free when I arrived to remove them for extraction and it was a snap.  Taking off the second batch of supers was very stressful and labor intensive.  This was compounded by the fact its best to use minimum smoke during the removal of the supers since the smoke can linger in the taste of the honey and without smoke the bees got very aggressive.  The escape boards at about $13 a pop are a bargain if they will save me aggravation and time on extraction day.

Sunday, October 21, 2012

2012-08-30: Harvest Countdown

2012-08-30 15.05.32 Getting Ready for Extraction

The plan for the day was to add bee escapes under the supers in Green and Blue.  These escapes are boards with one way exits in them.  If placed between supers and the brood boxes (and all other entrances are removed), the workers will exit the supers and not be able to get back.  My other task was to feed Red and the Nucs as well as to possibly swap frames out of yellow to Red to try to make sure Yellow didn’t get too crowded.

Orange:  Top super full.  I put an escape under it.  The top brood box looked full and capped.  I took 2 frames from Red and swapped with 2 in the top box to make sure there was room since the golden rod was in bloom.

2012-08-30 15.20.27 Getting Ready for Extraction

2012-08-30 15.25.45 Getting Ready for Extraction

 

 

 

 

 

 

2012-08-30 15.47.00 Getting Ready for Extraction

Purple: -

Green: Decided not to try to add escape as

Dark Green: -

Green Nuc: Starting to draw out the top box.  I fed it with sugar syrup.  Noticed a drone being evicted from the front. 2012-08-30 15.52.15 Getting Ready for Extraction2012-08-30 16.18.50 Getting Ready for Extraction

Yellow Nuc: Laying well in top box.  Fed.  May have to remove feeder to make more room for more frames next week.

Blue: Top super has had honey removed in the middle.  I put an escape under the supers and blocked the hole in the inner cover on top of the supers so bees would not come in that way.  They felt heavy so even if some honey had been removed, the other super certainly had some still it in.

I examined the drone frame and the there were some drone larvae, but most of the cells were being filled with honey indicating that drone production was tapering off.  That and the previously noted drone eviction is a sign of the hives preparing for winter.2012-08-30 16.04.17 Getting Ready for Extraction2012-08-30 16.09.43 Getting Ready for Extraction

 

 

 

 

 

 

2012-08-30 15.47.58 Getting Ready for ExtractionRed: Added the 2 frames of honey from Yellow (on the right side of the picture).  Fed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Yellow: -

Monday, October 8, 2012

2012-08-18: Looking Good

The plan for the day was to try to make sure no queens were in the supers on Orange and Purple, check the status of the honey supers, and to add syrup to the Nucs and Red.





Orange's super was capped (a beautiful sight!).  The top brood box had frames with honey at the top and brood and empty space on the bottom.  There may have been some swarm cells on the bottom. 






The bottom brood box had capped and empty brood cells with no eggs to be seen.  This got me nervous that the queen might have been trapped above in the super, so I removed the queen excluder.  The bees also seemed a little grumpy, but that might have been due to burr comb with brood being broken during the manipulation of the brood box.





Purple once again had bearding in the front and back of the hive.  The super had frames half full of mature honey.I also captured a nice picture of the bees rebuilding the comb from where I had cut it out previously in the drone frame.















The bottom deep had bee bread as well as capped and uncapped brood.  But there was very little honey.  The bees were pretty mellow despite the intrusion.












Green seemed filling up some of the emptied cells in the front of the supers with bee bread (honey mixed with pollen). 







Dark Green looked very nice with lots of brood in the top brood box and aggressive drawing out of foundation.  Though it did not have a lot of honey there which makes me a little nervous that they may end up with a surge in foragers but nothing to harvest.











Green Nuc did not have much going on in the top brood box.  I decided to move up a frame from the lower box to hopefully encourage them to start drawing out the foundation in the top.












Yellow Nuc had one frame in the top brood box filled with brood!  I fed both nucs to allow them to draw out the foundation and to start putting away winter reserves.  If it gets too crowded in the future I move a frame of brood to Red.



Red had frames added to it and I fed syrup
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