I would like to thank John and his family for doing all the work extracting out first honey harvest!!! I was stuck downtown with the wife for a seven-hour long four-hour mediation. I much rather would have been getting honey, darn it.
Anyway, because the Italians had 90%+ of their honey super filled a week and a half ago, we decided to do an impromptu harvest. John says it was an extremely sticky affair and Kirsten felt like she was sticking to herself a couple hours later as we were enjoying a beer. Their middle son, Aiden, pulled out a frame all by his lonesome and did not get stung. The fun thing about this experience is that he was the least interested of the kids when we brought the bees home that first day back in April. Now he'll actually talk about something besides video games! I know John is quite happy about seeing Aiden turn his interests around - makes for a good sense of fatherly pride.
Since we used a foundationless frame, John and the kids pulled the frames and then just lopped the comb off onto metal trays. The bees were readily removed using a trick we learned in a beekeeping class presented by the Denver Urban Gardens at the Delaney Farm in Aurora last Saturday: instead of using the bee brush (which is effective but really ticks the girls off), he used a handful of weeds. For some reason, this method doesn't anger the bees nearly as much. I'm guessing that they don't get rolled off like they do with the brush, but more just dislodged or pushed off. During the process, John reports that the bees remained pretty calm. Admittedly, between the two of us we have only received three stings from them, so we know that they are easy to work with. Still, they didn't even get riled up much, so we'll have to focus on this hive and split them so we can attempt to have more hives with hopefully the same temperment and production levels.
John used a pot with a collander for the extraction. He set the combs in and used a potato masher to squeeze the honey out. He was able to collect just over three 32-ounce-sized jars of honey plus four Mason jars with large chunks of comb honey and then still save a fram of comb for the everyone to devour. I'm estimating that we got about 10 pounds of honey out of this harvest. In remembering what different books have siad about how much honey a beekeeper should expect out of a super, this seems low (about half, actually), but this is this hives first harvest and we need to develop a more efficient method. The potato masher looked like a really messy way of putting the squeeze on.
Filtering quickly became our next issue. The next morning, John tried running the honey through cheesecloth. I won't repeat what he said about that mess, but his solution will now be to let the honey settle and scrape the wax off the top. I tried a nylon bag with similar results (even though I suspect the overall holes were larger than John's cheesecloth). I was also unhappy with the amount of wax that filtered out. Yesterday I tried a different approach. I found a wide mouth Rubbermaid container used for storing spaghetti and then stole (with permission) a pair of knee high panty hose from Joy (her only request was that they had holes in the toes). I knotted off the toe hole so I would actually get some filtering done and then placed one over the mouth of the container. This worked really well as there was plenty of knee high to slide over the container to keep it secure, while still having a large "reservoir" to hold the honey as it drained through into the container. I then warmed up the glass jars holding the honey in a large pot of water, bringing the honey to a temperature less than a warm bath but with a nice runny consistency. John doesn't want to use heat at all to preserve the enzymes in the raw honey. My though is that the hive is roughly 90-95 degrees, so as long as the temp is under that, I shouldn't lose the enzymes. Also, I am personally less concerned about the enzymes than I am having a waxy film in my cup o' tea. The honey filtered through the nylons marvelously and got rid of at least 99% of the wax and particulates. I'm calling the process "warm filtering." [ Bees do keep their hive cool by fanning their wings, so the honey may be a bit cooler then 90-95 degrees , also certain enzymes can be damaged or destroyed at temperatures of around 100 degrees , so in erring on the side of caution I am still against warming it even slightly. In regards to the wax, it has, after several days risen to the top leaving clear golden honey at the bottom. ( it looks like a jar of lager ). I am thinking of filling a wide jar right to the brim, and with some method of slight displacement, skimming the wax off . By the way , what does 'toe jam' honey taste like ? ;-) ~ John ]
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Most importantly, the honey tastes great! Unfiltered or filtered, it has a mild taste much like clover honey, rich creamy texture, and is sweet without being cloying. We can't really call it wildflower honey since most of the nectar collected by the girls comes from surrounding flower gardens. So I'm thinking that we'll call it Suburban Blend.
Whilst I got over to the Rodgers' too late to participate in the harvest, we decided to check the Carniolans and the Sicilians. The Sicilians were in Hyde-mode and really didn't want us to be in there (note: do not mess with aggressive bees at sundown when they are all home). John got stung once almost immediately after opening the hive. I'll be honest about something here, that makes me kinda happy! I'm tired of being the one who takes it from these ladies almost all time. Our score is 17 to 2 right now. He's finally starting to catch up! Either way, the mobsters didn't want us in the hive. They were attacking the hive tool so ferociously that I decided to leave them be and put 'em back to bed.
I'm heartened somewhat by the Carns! The queen is laying tons of eggs and the hive is much more spirited than it has been. They've knocked off a half jar of sugar water in two weeks, more than they have done in a month, and they were actually a bit fiesty in dealing with us, buzzing John's face. I had to get really brave to actually find eggs: I took off my veil so I could see them in the too dim light of the near dusk conditions. That's when I saw how many eggs the queen had been laying. That's also when a bee flew inside my shirt. It got out, but another got in. And she couldn't find her way out. So, as unpanicky as possible, I put the frame back in and stepped away, unbuttoning my shirt carefully so she could escape. Most guys would say it was awesome to have a lady in such intimate contact with your chest, not so true in this case!
Anyway, there is a possibility that the Carns will survive. They have about 6 weeks or so, depending on the weather in September, to rebuild. They have a queen that is super-productive. And they have us nurturing them along. Hopefully that will all be enough.
Bob
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