Honey Harvest II

We've been doing a honey harvest over the last two weekends.  A couple of our hives had several honey-filled supers on them ( supers are the boxes used to store honey above the brood boxes, where the queen lays eggs) and we were eager to get at them.  Last week we took two supers off of one hive, this week two supers off of another. 

We harvest using the crush-and-strain method, whereby we remove the honey filled comb from the frames, and, using gloved hands, crush the comb to release the honey.  The crushed comb goes into a mesh bag which sits in a bucket which has a number of holes in the bottom.  This bucket sits above another bucket, which catches the honey as it drips down.  Most of the honey runs down right away, but by leaving it sit for a day or two, we get a fair amount more.

We are left with buckets of honey, and a bunch of crushed wax which still has a surprising amount of honey left on it.  There are various options for dealing with this residual honey.  Our choice is to set the crushed wax outside on a table, and let the bees do the job of cleaning it up.  This is a job they perform quite happily, as a cloud of honeybees descend on the trays of spent wax, picking them clean of all available honey.  This honey gets returned to the hive to be stored, so very little is lost in the process.

Well, maybe not so little.  Harvesting honey is a messy business, no matter how you go about it.  We get drips on the floor, on the counter, on ourselves.  Clean-up of sticky honey takes some time.  We can leave the outside mess for the bees to deal with, but the inside mess requires lots of water, soap, and elbow grease. 

In addition to the honey, some four gallons worth still waiting to be bottled, we also have beeswax as a product of the hives.  So far we've rendered about one and a half pounds from this harvest, with more still to be done. 

We've also put up fourteen containers of honeycomb, natural comb with the honey still in it.  We plan to have these for sale, is anyone is interested in them. 

So a lot of work, but a very gratifying job.  We are nearing the dearth, a time when flowers are scarce, and the bees are doing well to gather enough nectar for their daily needs.  During this time they don't make enough to have a surplus for us, and that's OK.  There is also a fall flow when the autumn flowers come into bloom, and we might get a bit more then.  If not, it will help the bees make stores for the coming winter months.

In any event, we've got plenty of honey for our own use, and will have some to sell as well.  Though that was not our purpose for getting into bees, it's still a satisfying dividend to the process.