The instructors talked about winter preparation, what to expect in the cold months and what to look for in the spring. Most pertinent for me right now-they talked about the process of honey extraction. I had thought to leave my honey supers on until the end of the current nectar flow (golden rod and loosestrife are two of the most prolific plants right now) but they suggested that I extract immediately. Their theory is that if I extract now and then put the cleaned and empty comb back into the hive, the bees have another couple of weeks to produce even more honey for us to enjoy.
Of course this all took me completely by surprise and therefore unprepared. I scrambled to put in an order for jars, lids etc. and then started looking into getting the actual extractor machine.
Now if you remember, the frames of honey look like this:
This frame has capped honey at the top and uncapped at the bottom. This picture was taken back on the fourth of July so by now, all of the honey has the white wax cappings over it. Those cappings keep the honey at the right moisture level for the bees and preserve it so that it's fresh when they're looking for a snack. They just chew through the white cappings and belly up to the comb. When extracting, I'll scape all of the white wax off exposing the honey and then put it into what is essentially a centrifuge to empty out the frames.
I'll go into more detail once I do the actual extracting, but what we use is a machine that looks like this:
The frames of honey are placed into the barrel and then spun (via the hand crank) and the honey flies out, flows to the bottom of the barrel through a gate into sieves and then a 5 gallon bucket.
As I said, I was unprepared to be harvesting so soon but not to panic-our club has about 10 extractors that members can borrow. I emailed the resource person and he forwarded my email to a member in the next town. I'll sync up with her for the hand-off on the extractor. Unfortunately, not only was I unready, the weather is the absolute worst it could be right now.
Before you can pull the honey supers off the hive, you need to get all the bees out of them. There are a couple of methods but the one recommended by our instructors is to use a piece of equipment called a frame escape screen. I'll sandwich the screen pictured below between the hive body (the hive section with eggs and stored honey for the bees) and the honey super (the hive section with stored honey for harvest). This way, the bees can travel from the super back down into the hive (which they tend to do periodically) but will be unable to get back up. It's hard to see on the picture but there's a screen "maze" that hopefully will stump them all and I'll be able to extract clear, bee-less honey.
Back to my weather woes, we're having torrential rain today and scattered rain tomorrow and we all know how much the bees hate hive visitors when they've been cooped up for awhile. I need to get this escape frame on about 2 days before I plan to extract to give them all time to make their way out of the supers. Complicate this with the fact that once you are able to get the club extractor, they ask you not to keep it more than three days so that it's available to others and you'll see my logistical issues. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that the rain will clear tonight and by the time I get home from work tomorrow, the girls will have had almost 24 hours of flying time. That way, I can get into the hive, put the escape frame on and get out before anyone gets too hysterical.
Then if everything else works in my favor, I can get the extractor by Wednesday or Thursday and extract, clean up the machine and be ready to pass it on by Saturday.
Stay tuned-I expect it to be a nerve wracking week!
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