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24th August, 2008 - The Honey Harvest! Now that Autumn is here and the "nectar flow" coming to an end, it was time for our first honey harvest.
Unfortunately, Tracey was still in the UK which meant that she wasn't here for the main event, but Dan's brother and family were.
Knowing that the normally docile honey bees would be more than a tad peeved that their summer's hard work was being robbed, Dan made sure that he had full protective clothing on and plenty of smoke in the smoker.
A quick blast of smoke into the top of the hive sent most of the bees downwards and off of the frames of honey.
The bees that were not persuaded by the smoke, were shaken off of the frames just outside the front entrance of the hive. The frames were then put into storage boxes ready for transport to the garage.
The whole process of removing the frames of capped honey (12 in total) went fairly smoothly, but despite his protective clothing, Dan did get stung twice.
With Dan and co. now in the garage with the frames of honey and the bees still reeling from the smoke, it was time to get the honey out of the frames.
The first job was to cut the wax cappings off of the frames - a job made much easier thanks to Dave & Ciarans efforts a couple of days ago.
It was at this point that we could get our first taste of the honey harvest and everyone was soon "wiping away the excess" with their fingers.
As each frame was uncapped, it was then placed into the honey extractor and once this was full, it was time to crank the handle and let the laws of physics and centrafugal force take over.
After a good half hour of spinning, all the honey had been extraced from the 12 frames.
The next step was to drain the fresh honey out of the honey extractor and pass it through a sieve to get rid of any dead bees and bits of honeycomb.
Watching the honey pour out of the extractor really was a proud moment.
With most of the honey our of the extractor, the next step was to use a spatula to scrape down the sides and ensure that every last drop of honey passed through the filter into the settling bucket.
Dan's sister-in-law, "Pricey", employed her cake-making skills to do this - everyone else was too busy using their fingers to wipe up any honey that may have been lingering around.
When all the honey had been put into the settling bucket, it was time to weigh the harvest.
Everyone had a guess as to how much honey had been extracted and all were surprised by the 16 kilos that were in the bucket.
Not all of the honey was in the bucket though, a good amount was in the uncapping bucket and this takes a few days to drain through - rough guesses were that there was at least another 2 kilos of honey.
Add to this, the 4 kilos of honey that were extracted in the mini-harvest a few weeks ago, our first ever honey harvest has yielded a whopping 22 kilos!!! View The Blog Read All Bee Stories |
