Honey Harvest Day - Operation Honey Thief

Today was our first BIG honey harvest and it was an adventure. Dirty Feet put together some new frames and foundation for an additional honey super because we were taking one off and they girls need something to fill up. He also put together my NEW EXTRACTOR that my daddy-o drove all the way to Paris to pick up for me yesterday. Thanks Sarge!!

Dirty Feet uses brute man strength to put the new extractor together

At the hive the bees responded quite poorly to the honey robber. It didn't work as well as we'd thought it would to clear the supers. We put the fume board on and the hive got LOUD. After 10 minutes there were still a TON of bees in the top supe buzzing around and they seemed very confused and disoriented. There were thousands of my gals crawling out the front entrance trying to escape the foul smell (I don't blame them, I didn't like it either).

The Russians illustrating their disdain for my fume board and honey robbing practices.

 After getting a good look down in the supe it seemed as though enough frames were filled and capped and thus unready for harvest. I was a wee bit disappointed but I knew the bottom supe would be well beyond ready. We took off the top one and put it aside to be placed back on the hive later. 

The bottom honey super was so heavy that I thought it was glued down with propolis, it turned out being about 26 lbs.  The fume board worked pretty well on that supe and Dirty Feet and I loaded it into the wheel barrow, put the hive back together, and wheeled the supe around to the front of the shed. We went frame by frame gently brushing the hitchhiking bees off and putting the full frames in the uncapping tank.

Inside the house I got busy with the uncapping knife so that we could get the honey out with the extractor. We had a super special visit from Inches and her Mama :) They came by to pick up their honey and we got to explain the beekeeping basics and harvesting process to them. They even braved going out to see our grumpy gals. We LOVE visitors to The Hippie House, especially visitors that might start their own hives <3

Once each frame was uncapped with the uncapping knife, Dirty Feet loaded them into the extractor and spun away. The centrifugal force of the extractor spun the honey out of the combs and collected it down at the bottom near the honey gate.

Dirty Feet gets put to work extracting honey

The inside view of the extractor with frames in it

After we got done with all the frames, we set our extractor on the table and opened the honey gate to drain into a 5 gallon bottling bucket with a couple of micron filters on the top. Once it finally flows all the way through the filters our honey will be ready for bottling! We're taking orders on those bottles now.

Liquid love pouring into the micron filters

Small chucks of wax will be filtered out leaving  us with pure  honey.

Because we aren't using our frames again next year (that's right! We got a new hive!!!) we were able to use the uncapping knife to remove all the comb from the frames. I'll be using that comb to make candles and lip balm in the next couple of weeks. There's nothing like the smell of a beeswax candle!

mind your own beeswax

We set the empty frames out with the hive to let the girls them up and have a special treat. They were good sports about today, no stings, no aggressive behavior. Gotta love Russians, they make great babies.


Remember if you ever want to come by for a hive check or to see the girls just drop us a line!