11/3/09

Small Honey Harvest

A week and a half ago I pulled 2 frames of honey from our hive after doing an inspection. I had 2 replacement frames with starter strips so I just swapped those out and brought the entire full frames inside. Of course this wouldn't work if you had a lot of honey but it was nice to get a really good look a the full frames away from the hive.

This past weekend I finally had time to wash the buckets, drill the holes and crush and strain the honey.
We couldn't wait to taste the honey.


It was a family affair. We all took turns crushing the comb with the spatula.


Anticipation.


We modified the bucket set-up that Kirk recommends because we have a really small house and two mischievous boys who I am sure would find the dripping honey and tip the top bucket over. Instead we used a 3 gal bucket (with half inch holes drilled into the bottom) fitted into the 5 gal bucket with the honey gate. That made it a little shorter and locked the whole thing together. With the lid snapped on top if it gets tipped over it won't be a disaster as long as we get to it soon enough.


Here's the harvest from just two frames. The bees are going gangbusters so I need to get that other box on this weekend.