It turns out I was only able to take off 4 frames of honey this week instead of a full eight because I accidentally put the wrong super in the top position yesterday which was extremely frustrating. All in all, I think the mistakes I have made so far have been relatively minor and has not hurt the hive in the long run.
This time I extracted the honey at the site of the hive so I could put the frames right back in to be cleaned up by the girls. Also, the honey is extracted a lot easier when wearing a baby blue headband that gives +2 against spills. Last week I tried cleaning the frames and that didn’t work at all. Anybody know what the best thing to do with frames after extraction if you can’t get back to your hive right away?
I also got another batch of wax cappings and comb that I will process in the next week or so after I build a solar wax melter. I’m going to try the low cost version from Linda’s Bees blog. I figure it gets above 95 most days here in Austin in the summer time so this version will work well here in the south. There was a bit more pollen in these frames which is the darker stuff in the middle of the photo.
All in all, I got about another 20 pounds of honey this week. My expectations for the first year were little to no honey so kudos to Large Marge and crew for doing so well. If I can just keep them from swarming this first year, everything will be going great.
Urban Beekeeping in Austin, Texas 
Stunning honey! Nice work Large Marge and her crew.
Also, if we can’t give the frames back to the hive for cleaning right away, we’ll pop ’em in the freezer.
Love the pic of you scraping the comb into the bucket!
We don’t expect honey this year either. But like you, we seem to have some over-achievers on our hands. We put the second hive on two weeks ago (We are currently in week five.). Last night we opened it for a look-see – really to see if the bees had even made it up to the second story. Imagine our surprise to see 4 of the 8 frames mostly full already.
Did you feed your bees at all with syrup? If so, it could be more syrup in the frames then actual honey. I had to be really careful to note which frames had capped “honey” before I took off my feeder and afterwards. Either way though, I’m glad you bees are doing well!
We didn’t use any syrup. The man we got the bees from put a few of his own frames in our hive to get things rolling.
And I’m thrilled to know that Marge and the crew are doing so well too.
Awesome. I wanted to go the nuc route as well, but the Texas apiary I used only sold nucs that came with frames that would fit a deep brood box and not the medium supers I decided to use.