The Honey Must Flow

Before I get to the exciting honey news, Rosemary is trucking along, and I decided to remove the entrance reducer and add a third super to the hive.

She is starting to store honey in the frames so I also removed the feeder and will hopefully be done feeding this hive for the season. This is a good thing with her propensity for building wax on the inner cover with the feeder on. Nothing too bad this week, but I’m glad to be done with holding my breath every time I open the hive.

Moving on to Baab-Brock farms, Rue surprised me with her third super entirely filled with honey.

They are just starting to cap it so it is not quite ready to harvest. There must be a good flow on for them to basically fill out a super in a week’s time. My only concern with harvesting out of this hive is I was feeding them up until the 20th. While the bulk of this wax and honey has been drawn out in the past week, there could be a few frames of “honey” they may be the syrup I was feeding them.

The hero of this week is Knives 2.0 for having 2 supers filled with honey in various stages of curing. I was able to pick out 8 frames of capped honey for harvesting. I didn’t get a chance to use the bee escape as I was out of town for most of the weekend. I was concerned about brushing the bees off the combs, but Knives 2.0 makes some chill bees so it was a non-event.

One of the days I’m going to buy an extractor, but until then, it is the crush and strain method for me.

Here is a shot of all the wax in the first straining bucket.

After it strains through the first bucket and then a fine mesh, it is ready to bottle.

Please pay no attention to the cat. Worker Bee Honey is bottled in near cleanroom facilities.

Bottling in Worker Bee Honey clothing is essential for extra flavor.

After all the honey drains, you are left with wax that needs to be melted and used for various fun projects. Stay tuned for those in future posts.