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Offline BeeGood

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Our first ever honey harvest
« on: August 26, 2006, 10:49:00 pm »
We did our first honey harvest today. We planned to do both supers, but after a quick inspection, we realized one was not capped off completely, so we moved it asside and harvested the one below.

We used the "BeeQuick" on a fume-board and it seemed to remove about 80% of the bees. We brushed the remainder off.  The hardest part was lifting the full super from our very tall hive!

It was 30 degrees cooler today than it was just 2 days ago, so we added some heat-lamps to the room where we were extracting, to warm things up. But the honey was flowing very slow anyway and after a very long day, we bottled 27 pounds from the one shallow super.  :D

Pictures are available on the blog here:
http://beesandblooms.blogspot.com/

Offline latebee

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Our first ever honey harvest
« Reply #1 on: August 26, 2006, 11:18:42 pm »
Congratulations--You are now a honey producer. This will be the sweetest harvest of your life!!
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Offline thegolfpsycho

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Our first ever honey harvest
« Reply #2 on: August 26, 2006, 11:32:53 pm »
Holy smokes.  You've got the Mann Lake extractor,  the cappings tank, the capping knife, the bottling bucket with honey gate.  Nice setup for one colony.  Better get some more woodenware ordered for next years expansion!! :lol:

Looks great in the bottle.  Get some thin surplus foundation and cut a few chunks to put in your wide mouth jars.  Makes a great presentation.

Offline Brian D. Bray

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Our first ever honey harvest
« Reply #3 on: August 27, 2006, 02:13:06 am »
A tip that newbees almost always seem to over look (unless they have a good mentor) is to always have enough extra woodenware on hand to put at least 2 supers on each hive they have plus enough to catch 2 swarms.
Perpared before hand makes life so much easier and allows you to catch a feral swarm or split a hive.  Now days having the equipment for 2-3 nucs does the same thing as 2 empty hives.
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Offline TwT

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Our first ever honey harvest
« Reply #4 on: August 27, 2006, 02:34:48 am »
nice setup Beegood, nice pic on your site and good looking honey, congratulation on a good first year...
THAT's ME TO THE LEFT JUST 5 MONTHS FROM NOW!!!!!!!!

Never be afraid to try something new.
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Professionals built the Titanic

Offline BeeHopper

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Our first ever honey harvest
« Reply #5 on: August 27, 2006, 05:19:22 pm »
Beegood,

Nice job  !!!!
Can't wait for my first.


Enjoy .

Offline BeeGood

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Our first ever honey harvest
« Reply #6 on: August 27, 2006, 09:53:42 pm »
Quote from: Brian D. Bray
A tip that newbees almost always seem to over look (unless they have a good mentor) is to always have enough extra woodenware on hand to put at least 2 supers on each hive they have plus enough to catch 2 swarms.
Perpared before hand makes life so much easier and allows you to catch a feral swarm or split a hive.  Now days having the equipment for 2-3 nucs does the same thing as 2 empty hives.


Good advice, thanks. I think we realized we should of had an extra empty one when we needed a place to stack them after brushing off the bees.

Offline 2-Wheeler

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Our first ever honey harvest
« Reply #7 on: August 27, 2006, 11:50:20 pm »
(I'm the helper on this harvest.)
I have to add it was a bit exciting when the bees started getting mad, but neither one of us got stung.  

We'll have to make some changes for next year. I just can't imagine lifting a third super off that hive - its way too tall!  

I thought we'd keep it out of reach of the field mice, but I guess I miscalculated.

Another observatrion: While we didn't do any inspection of the lower deeps yesterday, there were no pests of any kind visible in the supers - good news.
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Offline thegolfpsycho

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Our first ever honey harvest
« Reply #8 on: August 27, 2006, 11:59:25 pm »
I would shorten up the legs on your stands a bit.  I've put them on stands, on cinder blocks, and on landscape timbers.  My final change was to set them on hardwood pallets.  Pallets are all over the place and some stores will let you carry them off to get rid of them unless they have a pallet exchange with their vendors.

Offline Finsky

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Our first ever honey harvest
« Reply #9 on: August 28, 2006, 03:33:10 am »
2-wheelers hive legs are really long. I use about one feet long. It is winter which need that long. In summer the stand may be  1/3 feet. Long legs don't stand 200 lgs weight.

In this picture only exracted honey weighted 240 lbs.

http://bees.freesuperhost.com/yabbfiles/Attachments/Kuva_049.jpg

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Offline tanam

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capping
« Reply #10 on: August 28, 2006, 04:30:11 pm »
We are novice novices as we don't even have bees yet.  We live in Crete and are trying to find out where we can get supplies and bees from!!

However, I wanted to ask. You mentioned 'capping' and I saw your pictures.  What is that white stuff and what do you do with it once you've scraped it off?  Also can you take all the honey from the hive?

Offline Mici

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Our first ever honey harvest
« Reply #11 on: August 28, 2006, 05:01:54 pm »
No, you can't take ALL honey from a hive. if the comb is mixed-some brood, some pollen and some honey, you definitly don't wanna take it out. by taking it out you would kill the hive-if you take all of them out. you take only what you have in so called "supers", usually you don't take out combs from the brood chamber.

when bees process nectar they turn it into honey. they essentially take away the moisture-from 80% of water only some...16% are left in honey, when the honey is rippen they cap it-with wax. when you uncapp the combs they are ready for extraction, without unccaping you can't extract the honey. what to do with those cappings?? some wash it with water and feed that to bees, but most beekeepers wouldn't advise you that-possible disease transfers. so try to uncapp it in a way you will take as little honey as possible with the cappings. then, when you get a lot of cappings, cook them like wax-so you have them in a nice cake and ready for sale.

 

anything