First honey
 

My medium super was completely filled with capped honey. This made me antsy because it means the bees have no more room to build and increase supplies, and probably increases the chance that they will split with a swarm.

So, because I temporarily don't have another super to add, I decided I would need to harvest. The extractor I was given appears to have a broken gear, plus it's sort of intimidating to try and use it if you have never been shown before how to use it.

So I decided to harvest cut comb, that is the honey and the wax together. This is how honey was often eaten back in the day. But today, most of you have probably never had comb honey. It's like eating honey + gum. The gun is the wax. It's delicious. One reason you don't see honey like this usually is because it takes bees 9 pounds of honey to produce 1 pound of wax. So destroying/removing the wax comb is very inefficient. But it certainly is the way honey has been eaten for millenia. The wax can be saved and made into candles and other products.

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Above are two medium frames of capped honey. The white stuff is wax.


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Here I am starting to cut the wax and honey. I am cutting there because there is a wire embedded in the wax, to prevent the comb from being destroyed while extracting. But here, with cut comb, it is in the way, and making me less efficient in terms of the amount of cuts I have to do.

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Picking up a piece of the comb I cut.


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Pieces of comb in the jar. 1 gallon jar.


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More shots of the comb in the jar. The cells that have been cut through are oozing honey into the bottom of the jar.

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Honey + bits of wax + santoku. We got a cup of honey just from the wax paper.

Looks delicious.

My uncle spent his entire career producing honey. Now his sons and grandsons have taken over the business. Hence, we were always swamped with honey. I love to eat it fresh with the bits of wax. Good stuff.

So now when you want honey you just pull out one of those rectangles and chow down? Or is there another step in the process?

If you want to eat honey straight, yes, you can just pull out honeycomb and eat it, and spit out the wax. If you need just plain honey, you can squeeze the honeycomb in a simple press to extract the honey.

I used two frames. I have eight frames left. I will extract the honey from those from the comb, so that the bees can use the comb again and give me a refill.

Excellent report Mike.

Looks sticky.

Are they poor as dirt? Many bee operations have gone belly-up.

They never made much money at it. I haven't talked to them for a while. I wonder how they are doing.

My inlaws gave us a bucket of honey for Christmas and our food storage. It weighs about 20 pounds. My daughter pulled it off the pantry shelf and it fell on her foot last week. Her foot was very swollen and she could not walk. We took her to the doctor it was just a bad contusion. That is my only experience with honey.

Thi smay be one of the stupidest questions ever, but here goes:

Is honey bee poop?

Dang, that looks scrumptious. I love fresh honey.

From Wikipedia:

So no, not bee poop. Bee vomit.

My first honey was a girl from Orem named Corine.

WHen I was a kid my grandma used to give me honeycomb to chew on. It was delciious and Mike's description is spot on. I am not sure where she got it from, as we did nto have hives, but I didn't worry about that too much.

I know you can usually buy honey in the comb at Hispanic markets. I have seen it there before.

It is pretty tasty stuff.

I opened the hive for the first time since last fall. The bees are doing well. I noticed vigorous activity coming in and out of the entrance. Workers coming in with pollen on their legs is usually an indication that hungry brood are being fed.

The structure of my hive is like this

medium super
medium super
shallow super
deep super

(deep is on bottom).

No bees in the top super, but bees just below that. Honey AND larvae (brood), in the next medium super down. All of that is a good sign.

I'm prepared to finally get a decent amount of honey, in this my third season with the hive. And just in time before the world collapses.

Bee sting near my left armpit did a number to me. Left arm swelled to a fairly impressive size. I am 60 hours out now, and finally starting to get back to normal.

I hate to think what would have happened if I had been stung multiple times.

had you not been stung before? was that an unusual reaction?

1. have been stung before
2. not an unusual reaction

in that case, I also hate to think what WILL happen when it's multiple stings. Do you have some kind of antihistamine at the ready?

No, just a medical attorney document and a will.

Have you increased your life insurance?

I checked on the hive yesterday. It is doing well. Very vigorous. I didn't see any hive beetle.

Good honey stores, so I don't think I will need to feed them.

They have moved up into the 4th super, so that means the population is expanding. I saw a lot of capped brood in the 3rd super, so I am well on my way towards a large population. Worried about swarming now, but realistically I'm not going to try and prevent it. Too much work and checking. Now if my dad comes up and convinces me that I need to do a split and that the split needs to become his property, well he can probably convince me of it.

Of course, another problem will be if the queen starts laying eggs in the 4th super. That would be bad. I would merely end up with the world's largest beehive, and no actual honey to harvest. I've been burned by the queen excluder before and I don't feel like using it.

I do have a 5th super that does not have drawn out comb, that is on the ready.

Oh yeah, need to get those epi-pens.

I was talking to my father yesterday, and he asked me whether there were any bees in the first super (i.e. brood box). What he meant was this--I have four supers. Each super is merely a box with frames inside. I have 4 boxes that are stacked up, with a bottom and a lid. That is the beehive.

I didn't know the answer. The question is relevant because bees have a tendency to migrate up into a hive, going from the bottom to the top. In pursuit of the honey they have stored, they start elevating the area where they make babies, and you may end up with an empty box at the bottom, which is an inefficient way to house your bees.

The reason I didn't know the answer is because it has been a long time since I actually took all the boxes apart and looked at the bottom super. So I decided to do that. Put on the veil, started up the smoker, wearing gloves. For some strange reason a cloud of bees encircled the hive. There were a lot of agitated bees. I smoked the heck out of them. I had never seen them do that. They weren't super aggressive, they weren't trying to attack me, they were just agitated.

Killed a couple of hive beetles taking off the top. Then started pulling off the supers one by one. When you don't take your hive apart, you will get "bridge comb" between supers. That is, the bees will make comb between the boxes and when you pull them apart, you end up breaking that bridge comb. So I saw rather large larvae that were exposed as I pulled boxes off. It's ok, there are plenty more from where they came from, and those at the bottom of frames are usually worthless drones.

End of the story is that yes, there were plenty of bees in the bottom super, and no, I didn't get stung, and when I put it altogether the cloud of bees went into the hive and disappeared like magic, like I had blown a whistle and they obeyed on command. There are starting to be a good number of bees in the top super, so that is where they will (hopefully) store the honey that I will harvest. We shall see.

What controls the sweetness and quality of the honey?

The strain of bees, climate, nesting material, or the type of flowers polinated? Or all of the above?

The nectar source.

Clover honey is considered to be the standard, and what people are used to. But there are many other sources of nectar, each leading to a different kind of honey, both in flavor, density, and appearance.

Some honeys are considered by some to be unpalatable, and are used for cooking only. As an example, my father doesn't like youpon honey. I like it ok. Some honeys that you may have heard about are tupelo and orange blossom.

I don't know what my honey will be. Probably just a generic "wildflower" honey.

One of the important nectar sources in the south during the later months is the Chinese Tallow tree, which is basically an invader weed tree that some people have in their yards. A lot of honey is produced from these trees, but I understand the sugar content is low, so you have to be careful with this kind of honey going bad.

There have been several requests for an update on the bees. Ok, I lie, there have been no requests. Yet, I continue on. Kind of the mantra of this site.

The bees continue to grow in numbers. They have started putting honey into the 4th super and the frames inside that super have about 60% coverage. I would say that optimistically the super is now 10% full of honey. But that will change rapidly. So I have to be ready to remove those frames and harvest.

Thankfully I didn't see any small hive beetle. Which is not surprising, given that the hive is very strong right now. The entrance of the hive is incredibly busy. Imagine the deck of an aircraft carrier with hundreds of bees flying in and out every few moments. This contrasts greatly with previous years.

I noticed one bee land at the entrance, and it was immediately attacked by two "guard" bees. It escaped and flew away. It was probably a "robber" from another hive. Bees will rob honey from other hives. The strong get stronger, and the weak perish. If your hive successfully robs a weak or dead hive, it can very rapidly increase its honey stores. I wonder if my hive is out there "robbing." I will discourage it, because it doesn't fit with my ethos. I doubt they will listen.

I guess, right now, my hive weighs over 150lb, and perhaps closer to 200lb. That's a lot of honey, wax, pollen, and biomass.

I should check my hive. When the nectar comes in heavy, things can get done explosively. We've had a lot of rainy cool weather around here, and that means less foraging for the bees. So, things may heat up quite quickly and I need to make sure my bees don't run out of room.

Cracked the hive open. Killed a few hive beetles. There were more than last time.

Not much change since the last time I cracked it open. That will change, I think, if we can get some sunny weather.

Opened up the hive again last weekend. And no progress!

It's been rainy and cool and overcast for a while around here, which is bad for honey production. We need hot, dry days with lots of sun to get the nectar flowing.

I hope my young bees will be suckling at the nectar-teat of many flowers this week. Otherwise, it may be that this season was a whiff.

Some progress. The super is still not full, which is disappointing. But it is filling up. It's not been a good year for honey.

I'm thinking about re-queening my hive. That is where you buy a new a queen, find the old queen and smush her, and then put your new queen in the hive (there is a way of doing this so that she is accepted and not killed).

The thing is my queen is 3 seasons old now (if she hasn't been superceded). And for serious honey-producers, that is an old queen. They might requeen every month or two.

On the other hand, I do have a hive that is relatively docile (important not to get stung) and is strong, without any use of pesticides. So the genes are pretty good. I might buy a queen and have it all go to hell, although that is unlikely.

I'll talk to my dad about it. Because I would have him do the requeening. There is no way I'll be able to find the queen looking at potentially 80 frame-surfaces.

In the meantime, however, LONG LIVE THE QUEEN!

How much honey have you been able to get out of it this year? We've been trying to buy local honey more often.

If you look at the beginning of this thread, you will see that I harvested two frames and ended up with about a gallon of honey + wax.

Basically I am waiting for 10 of those frames to be full before I harvest. I might have 3 or 4 frames right now, all total.

So if 2 frames = 1 gallon. Then, fingers cross, I will end up with 3 gallons at least.

What do you do with three gallons of honey? Make three acres of baklava?

When you use honey w/ baking, it goes quick.

I plan to give some if it away as gifts, if I ever get any.

That's a pretty good amount. We go through honey like there's no tomorrow. It's great for baking and smoothies too.

it's not possible to own too much honey. It will go quick.

I got a gallon container of honey as a wedding gift. I re-gifted it to my mother.

1 gal is 12lb. 4.50 per lb is $54.

Not a bad gift.

I guess it must not have been a gallon, since I think it was more in the 5-10 pound range. I'm sure most people have a mental list of bizarre wedding gifts they received. This is example number one for me.