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.
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.
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