Honey Harvest 2012

Today, we completed our first honey harvest and over-all it was quite successful! Yesterday, we set everything up so we were ready to begin extracting first thing in the morning. We rented an extractor this harvest from our local bee farm Walk About Acres. We would HIGHLY recommend anyone who is needing any equipment or just advice to check out their website or give them a call. Below, is a pictorial summary of our day. Though we only had one super to harvest from one hive, we still gleamed ~15 lbs of honey!  Not bad for our first season (with a drought none-the-less).

The "work shop." We set up shop in the corner of my dad's repair shop. You can see all the equipment we used in the above pic.

 Capped honey frames

Uncapping the honey. The knife you use is thermostatically heated thus the wax cappings simply melt off into the uncapping tub below.

After the frames are free of all cappings, you place them in an "extractor." By cranking a handle the frames spin around and centrifugal force causes the honey to spin out onto the sides of the extractor. Thus sliding down to a valve we open and drain into a mess screen where we drain the honey from any remaining wax pieces.

 The extractor. We hope to own one of our own before our next harvest (hopefully this spring!)

 Little Robert wanted in on the action too!

The wax cappings. These cappings are what we cut from the frames above. They melted into this uncapping tub where they fell onto a screen and any honey that clung to the cappings drained into the tub below.

The honey!  We chose honey bears as our bottles this year. We bottled a total of 13 1/2 12 oz bears

BEE SPITTLE!!!

Next weekend!

After another inspection earlier this morning, we have decided to go ahead and schedule our first, honey harvest for next Saturday (Sept 22). We have an extractor on hold to rent and all our materials ready--at least we are hoping so!  Will probably spend the week looking through materials on harvesting honey, watching informative DVDs/YouTube videos and just familiarizing ourselves with the entire process.

We sampled a little of the honey from some sections of comb today and it was DELICIOUS! Wish us luck and we promise to provide update with photos of the entire process as soon as we can. 

The LONG lost update!

Have been meaning to post for a LOOONG time now! UPDATE: We will are looking at harvesting honey from only 1 of our hives this year. We are fairly pleased considering its our first year and the girls are still getting established and the drought. Here are a few pics from awhile back.

 coming in after a long days work

 Keith the dog getting in on some beekeeping

 See the white caps on top? That's HONEY baby!!

 Keith inspecting frames

BEE SPITTLE!

Update

We have taken a few weeks off from checking on the bees, so my husband poked in on them this afternoon to see how the girls are coming along on the 2nd super. 

2nd Hive Body

We added the second super today. The girls had most of the frames in the first hive body drawn out (as you can see in the below pictures). It was another hot one out and pretty breezy too, but tucked back in the tree line really helped. We were in the shade and the girls didn't seem to mind us at all :)

 A frame from the first hive body

 Plenty of capped brood and some honey there in the upper portion of frame as well!

 Some of the girls coming in from a long, hot day working. (Sorry pic is sideways)

How the hives look with both hive bodies. Hubby in background placing top feeder and cover back on.

We went and checked on the girls today.  (And finally got some photos taken.) They are coming along great! We nearly have enough drawn out comb to install the next super--we will probably be doing that in a week or so. Other than it being rather hot (and maybe a little on the windy) side, once again my biggest concern was whether or not I was covered in ticks. Being stung by one of "my girls" is no longer a fear of mine. Enjoy the photos--and feel free to post any comments or questions--or advice, we are up for that as well!

 There are our two hives...right near the woods,

 How our hives look now. Top feeds are still on.

 Husband smoking down the hive before we peek inside.

 What a top feeder looks like. That's sugar water inside.

 The girls are still working on drawing this frame out.

Husband with a completely drawn frame. White capped honey at top corners. Ain't scared!

 Some guard bees keeping out intruders. We saw a couple "tussles" while we were out there.

BEE SPITTLE!!

Welcome to Bee Spittle Farms!

This blog was created under the urging of my Aunt Michelle. Through it I hope to relay the events and day-to-day activities/musings of a new beekeeper.


We (my little sister, husband and I) began beekeeping this spring 2012. We currently have two hives that are located on my family's farm, tucked into the woods. We hived two Italian bee colonies and are currently monitoring their growth. So far, all is going quite well and has been remarkably easy. (Pics will be added soon!)