My first harvest! Two gallons of this wonderful sweet stuff. Finally extracted and in the jars. It was accomplished without too much mess in the kitchen, without invasion of those little brown “sweet-eating” ants, and (thankfully) no particular interest from Frankie (the cat).
Big day! Yesterday, take off the super, and today–extraction!
I turned into a wuss yesterday and donned the bee jacket and gloves since I was going to pull a super of honey for harvest. I thought I might need to use the bee brush to get the girls off of the frames of honey. Even the calmest of girls can get a bit testy when you start pushing them around, but they were extremely calm and the escape board had worked very well. (I hadn’t had the full jacket on since last July and I hope not to have it on again for a while.) The thermometer on my shaded back porch was reading 88 degrees Fahrenheit when I pulled that super of honey; I was dripping like a soaker hose. I did have to do a little brushing. The frames were almost all full and almost completely capped–felt like 35 to 40 pounds when I lifted it down from the hive. Much more when toting it from hive to kitchen even though the hives are not far away.
My first extraction. I really appreciate Brushy Mountain Bee Farm’s video library, especially since I’ve not gone through an extraction with another beekeeper. I know part of the video is to sell stuff, but there’s good information on things to do and not to do.
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The kitchen was transformed into the honey room last night: plastic drop cloths covering the table and the floor, the honey extractor, uncapping bucket, honey bottling bucket and the super of honey (but I did manage to leave a path to the espresso machine for morning coffee before I started the extraction this morning.
I’ve discovered one thing that I thought I didn’t need that I will have by the next extraction: a method of stabilizing the full frames over the bucket that I’m using to catch the cappings as I take them off the cells. It gets rather drippy and slippery as you’re lifting those nice little white caps off of the cells filled with honey. A full frame weighs about 4 or 5 pounds, and holding it up with one hand really exercises some muscles that I didn’t think about until almost the second frame! Why did I decide that I didn’t need the gadget that fits over the bucket and is designed specifically to rest and stabilize the frame? Beats me now as I’m uncapping! Hindsight is always so much better than foresight! Sigh!
Since the extractor is a tangential, hand-cranked one, it’s a rather long process and I’ve discovered that how you open the cells makes a huge difference in the amount of cranking you have to do. I opted for a capping scratcher, but it takes longer to spin out the honey with scratching as opposed to actually lifting off the cappings (or cutting with a knife)! After the first scratched frame, I resorted to lifting the caps off. But…next time I’ll try to arrange things so that I can use a knife. (I tried a bread knife, but the comb in these frames was uneven enough that it didn’t work well.
Seeing that first honey drain out of the extractor is a thrill. Awesome. This was the first real taste I’ve had of the honey from my bees–my local honey. It is certainly different from the jars of supermarket honey that go as “wildflower” honey. True, what I’m extracting is “wildflower” honey, but it’s much more aromatic. I’m only straining–not filtering or heating at all to preserve as much of the character as I possibly can. My kitchen smells so good.
My kitchen smells so good.
I made less of a mess than I thought I might! I’m being un-ecological and not even trying to clean up that drop cloth. The honey the bucket doesn’t look that impressive, but it is a five-gallon bottling bucket, so there is really a reasonable amount of honey there. Now to clean up the extractor.
The honey in the bucket doesn’t look that impressive, but it is a five-gallon bottling bucket, so there is a decent amount of honey there. I am anxious to see how many bottles/jars I have when I can bottle it after it has stood for a bit to let air bubbles go away (although I’m not entering it in any contests or the state fair–this year). I’m just happy to have it to share with friends.
Now to clean up the extractor and the other bits and pieces associated with this process. Most of it was easy to clean–a little soap and warm water. I think the extractor is going to have to go outside for a good rinse with cold water from the hose! I’ve heard that I could let the bees come clean away the residual honey from the extractor; but after a conversation with a Facebook friend, also a beekeeper, that might lead to bees stuck in the honey that’s still on the sides and bottom. Not good–don’t like stuck, dead bees! I’m letting it sit overnight since honey is still draining down the sides to the bottom; I’ll see what has accumulated in the morning. For now, I feel like it was a good day’s work.
I’m hoping to have a little cut-comb from the outside frames even though the ladies decided that would make a good brood chamber (along with the other three medium boxes). That will certainly be easier to process than doing extraction like this, but it is very taxing for the bees since they have to make new comb. With this extraction, they get the comb back to repair and reuse.
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Wow! I’m NOT good at judging how fast my ladies work. I inspected both hives this afternoon–and made a trip to Bailey Bee Supply for more supers to put on the hives and some the basic paraphernalia need for my first honey extraction. I need only worry about the small stuff–the Durham County Beekeepers Association, our local bee club, has an extractor that I can rent–and I’ll pick that up on Sunday.
I’ve put the escape screen on the hive to let the bees out of the honey super, but not let them get back in. In a couple days, I’ll go back and remove the super with the honey and do the extraction.
Much to my chagrin, I discovered that I have brood and pollen stored in the super that was intended for cut-comb honey. The bees had virtually propolized the queen excluder closed so I, in my “newbee” wisdom, removed it. Seems that ladies didn’t think that they had room enough to raise brood. So–now to figure out what to do about that. Looking at the number of frames that they have already drawn, I suspect that just became a brood box at least until later this fall. Next time around, I’ll know to keep the queen excluder on.
This morning (24 June 2016) I put a new honey super on Salvia–I’ve set my beekeeping software (Hive Tracks) to remind me to check in no more than a week to see what progress the bees have made on that new super. 
Margarine does not come into my kitchen. I would rather have a bit of butter in moderation, but the real thing. I was skulking about on the web this afternoon I found this article on butter from Food Republic and though I’d share it. There’s some fun browsing if you interested in fish eggs in Japanese cuisine, or whether it’s a food fad or trend.
There’s some fun browsing on lots of other topics: fish eggs in Japanese cuisine, or whether it’s a food fad or trend, Filipino food, or maybe butchery or charcuterie questions.
I’m back home after a very good convention. Good to meet other indexers, but also good to be home. Now to get back on track with the Always Hungry? style of eating, which, unfortunately, wasn’t well maintained while away. I can cope with a la carte ordering in a restaurant, but with meals provided without choice it just wasn’t possible. Lots of good food, but lots of pastries, sandwiches, and “white” things. I can really feel the effect of the infractions, though I did manage to maintain the weight loss I’ve gotten so far.
I’m not in any way complaining about the food provided at the convention–I’m just acknowledging the fact that I didn’t manage to hang with the meal plan. I can really feel the effect of the infractions, though I did manage to maintain the weight loss I’ve gotten so far.
I’m looking forward to getting back into my home cooking and using dishes I’ve got in the freezer as soon as I do my back-home grocery shopping.
This gallery contains 8 photos.
Another “green sauce” to liven up all sorts of things–just the thing if you want a bit of a change from gremolata.
I do enjoy Facebook! Because my friends have such diverse interests, I get to read articles that I might never have encountered were it not for perusing Facebook posts. In this case, I’ve been overwhelmed with work (love that) which cuts into my skulking about the internet looking for fun stuff.
Here’s a link to an article from NPR on the Eastern and Western use of spices that I just read (no it’s not new–only new to me) and enjoyed.
It has finally soaked into my brain that I keep babbling on about “boxes”, “supers”, and frames–without much explanation so I’ll try to remedy that. The hives (that is the woodenware or structure) is made up of a number of structures stacked vertically in layers. If you look closely, you’ll see that the hive on the left (which is Rosemarinus–how else would a cook name hives?) has five “layers” sitting on a wooden base. Salvia (on the right) has only three layers right now (a new one added just today). The hives that you see here are Langstroth (after the inventor)–a very commonly used vertical hive. The hive is made up of several parts. Let’s start from the bottom and work up.
Note: All the images of hive parts are from the Bailey Bee Supply website since my components are all in use. The photographs of bees and in-use components are from my hives (bought from Bailey Bee Supply). Since many of the pictues seem to have disappeared, I’m adding a simple diagram that’s labeled.
The wooden base with a sloped area (at the entrance) on the very bottom of the hive is a landing board to help the bees get into and out of the hive easily. It’s kind of a landing pad and place to taxi for takeoff.
Obviously, the hive needs a “floor” of some sort; on top of the landing board and frame we use a “bottom board”. Clever terminology, huh? In this hot climate for ventilation and to help control pests that like to hang around the hive, I use a screened bottom board–hardware cloth that is a small enough mesh that the bees cannot go through it. The white grid you see slides out so that the screen is open–it’s used to do maintenance things like mite counts when we need to assess for Varroa destructor infestation.
Now for the business parts of the hive. We build layers of “boxes” for various functions of the colony (that refers to the bees living in the hive). We add as many boxes as the colony needs to rear brood and to store honey so hives can be tall. (The upper layer is just at shoulder height for me, filled with honey, so it weighs about 40 pounds.)
A box is just a wooden structure. We refer to them by different names depending on what the bees are using them for: brood boxes are where the queen lays eggs and the nurse bees rear new bees. Usually, the lower two or three boxes on the hive tower are used this way and we call those brood boxes or brood chambers. That huge open space is not very functional for bees to build tidy comb so we put in dividers: frames on which the bees build comb.
Here is a box filled with frames. Each frame is a wooden (or plastic) frame (like a picture frame without a picture in it). In order to help the bees be neat and tidy, we supply them with something to start building comb: a foundation–a base on which to build (draw) comb. This can be a sheet of beeswax, or plastic (coated with beeswax). You see a frame with wax foundation tipped up at the back of the box.
Bees are constantly rearing new brood–in the summer when work is hard the lifespan of a bee is about six weeks. So the lowest three boxes on my hives are brood chambers. The frames there are filled with comb into which the queen deposits one egg is each cell. To keep the housework simple, honey and pollen needed for brood rearing are stored around the edges of each frame.
Above is a frame that I’ve pulled out of the brood chamber for inspection. (It’s actually being held upside down as I’m rotating it to look at both sides–so the bottom of the frame actually appears at the top of the photograph.) The darker, golden brown comb that you see (and the area under the cluster of bees) is where the queen has laid eggs, which turn into larvae, and then into pupae. The bees here are nurse bees–they are feeding the larvae. This is a pretty typical brood frame. An area at the bottom of the frame in an arc contains the brood. Around the ends and the upper edge of the frame is stored honey and pollen used to maintain the colony. The cells containing honey are covered with wax–“capped”.
This frame is held right-way-up. You can see the brood area. Near the bottom center you see the golden brown cells that now have been covered with wax. These are what we beekeepers call “capped brood”–and contain maturing pupae–which will emerge from the cells to begin their working life. Again around the edge is capped honey. Now you have a general idea of the brood chambers. Hives will always have brood chambers. Now we come to another section of the hive–the honey storage part.
The term “super”–is the beekeeper way of saying that we have put boxes with frames above (over or superior to, thus “super”) over the brood chambers for the bees to use for honey storage–some of which we will take away for honey harvest.
The frame above is from the “super”–the box over the brood chamber where there is only honey storage–no brood rearing. The wax here is lighter in color since it hasn’t been used for brood rearing–this is the good edible stuff that can be used for comb honey, or have the honey extracted (by centrifugation) and the comb (wax) returned to the bees to fill again.
Many of the cells here have already been covered with wax–sealed for storage after dehydration so that it won’t ferment. At the bottom center, you can see some open cells–uncapped cells–that still need to have water evaporated from the nectar for it to become honey. Now you know about supers as well as brood chambers.
inner cover
Now our bee house (hive) needs a ceiling and a roof. The ceiling is the inner cover. It helps to control heat in the hive, and allows us to use feeders if needed during the cooler weather or when not many thing are blooming or to get through the winter. (Yes–we do sometimes need to feed our bees.)
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Finally, we come to the “roof”–which in bee lingo is a “telescoping cover” or “outer cover”. We call it “telescoping” because it can slide forward or backward to allow ventilation through the hive in hot weather or to allow a top entrance for bees to enter and exit the hive. This is a basic, no frills, functional hive roof–what you see on my hives.
As beekeepers we need to “inspect” the colony. That means that we look inside the hive to see if all is going well: the queen is laying eggs, to make sure that there is not some nasty disease in the colony, to see how much pollen and honey is stored.
For an inspection we disassemble the hive into its parts and we pull at least some of the frames and look at both sides of them–to see if the honey is capped, and if the larvae look healthy, et cetera.
You start the inspection by removing the telescoping cover and the inner cover–after using some smoke to let the girls know that you are going to invade their home.
Here is my hive with the “roof” removed–and looking down on the “ceiling” or inner cover. You can see that you start encountering the welcoming committee right away. Once you remove the inner cover (below) you can see the frames in the boxes–and the girls going about their business. They’re going to be walking and flying around all the time you are inspecting the colony, but they don’t sting unless you injure them. (They die when they sting, so it’s a last resort for them.) But they are curious, and will explore so a veil is a necessity during an inspection.
Now when you look at first photograph, I hope you can find the parts of the hive at bit better. Rosemarinus (on the left) has three brood chambers and two supers. If it’s a very productive season, I may need to add one or two more supers. One of the supers on Rosemarinus is for comb honey so can remove it when the girls have filled it and give them an empty one to go to work on.
Salvia (on the right) has only brood chambers right now. I’ll be keeping a close watch on it to see when they need to have a super put on so there’s plenty of place for them to stash the sweet stuff–some for them for the winter, and some for me.
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I woke up to pleasant, sunny weather this morning–so I made a beeline (sorry, but I just had to put that in) for the hives.
I was feeling really pressured to inspect Salvia (the hive on the left) to see if I needed to add another honey “super”–another box with frames and foundation. My inspection was abbreviated as soon as I got the inner cover off and pulled out one of the side frames. Bees don’t really “like” to work the side frames in a box, so those are often empty or light. This one wasn’t it was a good three pounds with both sides drawn into comb and being filled with honey and pollen.Looking between the other 7 frames it was obvious that the girls had been very busy. I needed to make a trip to Bailey Bee Supply on a pretty urgent basis–this colony was started from the swarm from Rosemary. Since this was a long holiday weekend, and the weather is a bit uncertain with a tropical depression heading out way and I certainly didn’t want these girls to decide that the hive wasn’t big enough and decide to go live somewhere else. I closed the hive back up, leaving the feeder (which was 
empty) off and moved on to check out Rosemary.
Rosemary (on the left) hive was inspected much more recently, so I just removed the top honey super on top–all 40 pounds of it–and pulled some of the frames in the super that is for comb honey. It looks as if the colony size is increasing now that the queen is laying. The bees have started drawing comb and storing honey on the center frames of that box now the queen excluder (which was almost entirely closed off with propolis) has been removed and the colony is growing rapidly. I closed that hive quickly so that I could make it to the bee store before they closed at 2 p.m.
After my dash to Hillsborough, I came back and gave the girls in Salvia some more room to stash honey on nice tidy frames instead of building extra comb on the base of the feeder–I think they were definitely feeling crowded.
Normally I’d give them more room when they had used 5 or 6 of the 8 frames in the box, but these girls had been so industrious that they were already close to filling all 8 of the frames. Looking in the hive today made me realize how fast they can fill a super with honey. I was a little late adding the super–I’m just glad I wasn’t too late.
Yes, there has been a dearth of posts here–not because of unwillingness, but because of my work schedule. I’ve had back-to-back books to index. As a result, my time at the apiary has been limited to what is strictly necessary, and my time in the kitchen for cooking has been about zilch, zip, nada, and none except for egg-based things like a quick variation of the frittata–transformed into scrambled eggs with greens, tomatoes, onions, and some cheese.
I maintained the weight loss from Phase 1, but I haven’t added to it. My maintenance of the meal plan has obviously slipped–just because I’ve not been trying any new recipes. Friends have told me that I really need to make the Shepherd’s Pie–maybe in about a week. Then, perhaps, the eggplant parmesan.
Fortunately, my freezer was stocked with the “leftovers” from Phase 1–recipes that could be used in all phases. The cabbage casserole freezes quite well–and so does the red lentil soup.
My freezer had some other things that were in keeping with the spirit of the plan and those got eaten as well. I did progress to Phase 2 (adding whole grains) by using some soups and one-pot dishes from my usual cooking–combinations of greens, meat, and whole grains.
a-single-serving.com 