Honey Harvest

We did our first real honey harvest this morning.  We had a super (upper box in the hive) full of honey which we had left over the winter, but which the bees haven't eaten.  Since the flow is upon us (or would be if it would ever warm up!) and they still have plenty of honey in the hive, we took off the super to make room for more empty ones to catch the honey yet to come.

This was a box of foundationless frames, meaning that instead of  a piece of plastic with the honey comb shape molded on it upon which the bees draw comb, these were empty frames with just a strip of wood at the top to act as a comb guide.  The idea is that the bees will line up their comb with the strip of wood, building it all within the plane of the frame, at least that's what the books say.  Unfortunately, the bees never read the book.  The comb was wonky, a term beekeepers use for comb which is built across two or more frames, or for any comb which doesn't fit neatly into the space of the frame.  Some of this ran across five frames, making it a challenge to remove.

We knew this comb was wonky, as it had been there since last summer.  Normally, the plan is to catch wonky comb as it is being built, then straighten it out so it is all within the frame, resulting in ten frames of parallel comb.Unfortunately, by the time we caught it, the whole box was built out, and the comb was full of honey.  At the same time, we had to deal with some health issues, and wonky comb became a much lower priority.  So we decided to leave it for the bees and extract what they didn't eat whenever we could get to it.

Some of the comb went directly into storage containers as comb honey.  If you've never eaten honey straight from the comb, you've really missed out.  There is truly nothing like it in this world.  The rest of the comb was crushed to extract the honey.

This extraction is being done via the crush-and-strain method, whereby we crush the honey-filled comb and place it in a mesh bag to drain into a plastic bucket.  This draining will take a day or two.  Once it is complete, the bag will contain the remaining beeswax, still covered with a layer of honey.  We will put this out for the bees to clean up.  They do a very good job of taking the honey off of the wax and storing it in the hive.  This way, nothing goes to waste.

The wax will then go into our solar wax melter to be rendered and refined.  The result will be several jars of pure, fresh honey, and a good chunk of new beeswax.  We are already looking ahead to the products we can make with the beeswax from our hives.