Beemaster's International Beekeeping Forum
BEEKEEPING LEARNING CENTER => GENERAL BEEKEEPING - MAIN POSTING FORUM. => Topic started by: Dimmsdale on July 04, 2013, 10:48:57 am
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I'm waiting on my extractor from my bee club. How long can you store full honey supers before you have to worry about beetles ruining the crop? Thanks guys! I hope your harvests are looking good!
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About 2 days if there is any brood or pollen in the frames. I think a little longer if they are pure honey frames. You can freeze them for 2 days in your freezer and then as long as you keep them sealed up real good they are good. Be sure you leave them out and let them warm up before you put them in the extractor. Cold frames do not like to release their honey stores.
Jim
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also depends on where you are. i have some that have been sitting in my dining room for a month because i thought i'd get more earler and do it all at once. then the rains came....
if you are in a place where you are going to have a bug problem, you might not want to do that. you can freeze, but as pointed out, you need to get them good and warm again before extracting. freezing also kills the critters that might be on the frames.
i am lucky to have very little wax moth and no hive beetle. i only need to worry about ants and so far they are not in my dining room :-)
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Wax moths and SHB in my area love beeks who pull honey frames and let them sit around for a few days before and after extracting the honey.
Don't ask how I know that.
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In my area two daysat the most. Don't pull the supers until you plan to extract or you could have maggots in your honey!
Speaking from experience,
Steve
SHB are demons from hell.
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Thanks guys! I almost dropped my iPad and ran out the door after reading your posts. My supers had been in the garage 5 days. Spent most of yesterday crushing and straining. Have one more super to go. Didn't see any signs of maggots, though I DID kill one SHB. No sign of any worms in the strainer or cappings. Did I dodge a bullet or could the i end up with worms in my bottles? I can't imagine the horror of losing my first sizable crop. Hopefully I won't have to. Thanks again for your help guys!
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You ran your honey through a filter, right?
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And I almost always run my boxes through the deep freeze before I extract now. And it doesn't take much to fill a couple of deep freezers.
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Yes, I filtered the honey with a 400 micron filter. No sign of any worms, but didn't know if they could hatch out in the bottles.
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They will not be in the bottles with the filter you used.
Jim
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Thank God! I almost had a heart attack there! Looks like I'm gonna get a little over 100 lbs off my one survivor hive. Have 4 new nucs and splits building up nicely. My third year and finally a little sweet taste of success! I hope you all are having a great harvest season. I can't believe it's here already! Seems like yesterday I was pacing around in the snow.
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If you can keep the humidity down, you can keep the small hive beetle eggs from hatching... the wax moths will get there eventually. What you sometimes can get away with is different than what you can count on...
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I've got 5 white one piece plastic med. frames sealed between two large restaurant trays. They have been there since 7/28/2012, one year. can I feed them back to a new hive, as is , just add the frames to a med super and place it on top.?.
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I left mine out for one day and the SHB took over about 3 frames. Gotta watch 'em.
...DOUG
KD4MOJ
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Funny I am right up the road from KathyP (going to have to meet her someday). I have two partial supers on my dining room table waiting for a lady at the bee club to send out her annual invite to use her extractor. The edges were not capped so if figured they could dry off there. They must have been there two weeks.
I put window screen on a bottom board, stack my supers, put window screen on the top one and place a box on it.
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JPbeegetter, if they look good, they are good. You can feed them back or eat them. Just be sure you have 10 frames in that medium, not 5 and a bunch of empty space.
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I just keep them in the deep freeze until I am ready. Longest I had honey in the freezer was over a year. Thawed on the kitchen table for two days (sealed against SHB and wax moths) then processed and it was fine.