Summer

We are underway! The bees seem to be thriving to the point that we almost can’t keep up with them. Remember, we gained two well established hives in our bee yard this spring in addition to two nucleus colonies that were installed late spring. The two established hives have boomed to the point that I am struggling to give them enough space. Each of those hives has filled a third honey super. That’s great, right? Except that I am out of supers. Well, not exactly…I have supers it’s just that they are the wrong size. I’ll try to explain… 

I started out with two eight frame hives. I chose eight frame hives because I’m weak and they are a bit smaller and lighter. However, when you get the opportunity to acquire two well established ten frame hives (each holding nine frames) that is HARD to pass on! Those hives are the only reason we have honey right now! Good decision to add those hives but now I have two different kinds of equipment. So, while I DO have eight frame honey supers, they won’t fit the ten-frame hives that need them.  

When you have two hives that have filled three honey supers and you are out of equipment it’s an uneasy feeling. I wasn’t exactly sure what to do. Maybe I could just cap them at three supers but what if they aren’t happy. What if they don’t have enough space? I went down to the bee shop and was advised to address the “filling up” issue I was seeing. I didn’t want to purchase additional equipment because I would have to store it…not to mention my hives are getting so tall I wouldn’t safely be able to add a fourth super and manage it. Honey supers are HEAVY when they are full of honey. So…I rented the extracting equipment thinking I’d just quick pull the capped honey and then return the empty super to each hive. Simple.  

The rental couldn’t have been easier. Picked up all the equipment we would need (extractor, uncapping knife/scraper, uncapping tanks, etc). We get home and set up…there’s a learning curve to all of this. We have extracted two times in seasons prior BUT we were spoiled in that our fabulous bee mentor invites us to his house where his set up is beyond impressive. Apparently after forty years of beekeeping you work out all the kinks and run a smooth operation. We’re a bit of a mess. I’d even thought maybe we would just extract the frames in the kitchen. That would have been insane! What was I thinking? You should have seen our garage once the process was finished. 

Let me back up a bit. When pulling honey supers you have to get the bees out of them. And it’s a lot of bees! Our mentor showed us how to use a fume board and it’s rather impressive. Spray some stinky stuff on the inside of a lid, if you will. Place on hive, wait a few minutes and all/most bees move down into the hive…it forces them to because they obviously don’t care for the smell. I have a fume board…but for an eight-frame hive. See this ongoing challenge? I didn’t want to purchase a ten-frame fume board as I thought I could improvise using cardboard. Cut the cardboard to size and then sprayed the cardboard as I would the fume board and them used the outer cover to help seal the sides down. It worked pretty well. BUT…once the frames were in the garage and the door is closed (always close the door so the bees from the hive don’t follow the honey!) you begin to see how many straggler bees you have brought with you. Now, had I been doing this in my kitchen I would have more diligent in trying to remove all bees but it’s likely you miss a few…can you imagine the blog about bees in the house?!?!?! Just a reminder that things can always be worse.  

Despite the straggler bees in the garage, we were able to extract the frames without being stung. They are attracted to the lights up above but are still tempted by the honey we are handling. We were able to use caution and put a fan on us (to blow them away) while frame by frame uncapping and extracting the honey.  

Our mentor has an amazing electric extractor that holds more frames (I forget how many but definitely more than six) – never had we used a manual extractor that you physically have to crank and spin to remove honey from the frames. We thought it might be “fun” and it was…for like the first five minutes. It was work. It takes forever AND the honey was really thick…it was almost impossible to get it to all spin out. This is frustrating because not only are you losing out on your honey harvest but your frames are a sticky mess. Be it what it is, we were counting it as a “learning experience” and doing the best we could. After all, this entire process was not only about extracting honey but also about freeing up equipment to give back to the bees as they were in need of more space to work.  

We were able to get the supers back on the hives before dark that same day. Some of the frames still had so much honey in them that we opted to replace them with foundation only frames. These frames do not have drawn out comb so the bees will have to work to build the comb on those frames before filling them with honey…might slow them down a little bit as the honey flow comes to a close this summer. Decisions had to be made, not sure we made the best decisions but for now the hives should have enough space for them to work the rest of the summer…we hope.  

With all the honey extracted and filtered (and note…be sure to filter the honey as it comes out of the extractor and into a bucket…we almost flubbed this step!) and safely in a bucket all we had to deal with was the cleanup. Such a mess. We had honey everywhere. On the floor, we had walked in it, and I still had about six frames that were only partially extracted. It took days and when it takes days to clean up all the honey you draw ants. It’s hot in the garage and you have to keep the door closed or the bees will find the honey. It’s sticky. Doesn’t that sound like fun? In a perfect world where life stops for bees it wouldn’t have been such a scattered and sporadic process. But in between practices, games, graduation parties, church, sleepovers at grandma’s house, dinner out…that ants made their way in. But I will say, I knew they would be coming…if there is honey left the ants always seem to find it. These are the things you learn as a beekeeper! 

Now, finally…let’s address those six partially extracted frames. I was advised to put them back in the hives…take out the frames with just foundation and put the partially extracted frames back in for the bees to clean up. There were concerns of robbing with this approach and I’m very glad I didn’t put these partially extracted frames in my weaker colonies as I had considered as I don’t believe they would have been strong enough to defend against robbing. I COULD have slipped them back into the stronger hives and maybe I should have but having been in the hives so much I didn’t feel good about getting back in there for a third time so they could clean up my mess. Not to mention I wanted to slow them down a little bit and I thought the foundation frames that I had given them might help with that. Maybe? Maybe not? I’m still trying to figure a lot of this out. Anyway, I didn’t put the partially extracted frames back in. Instead, I took them away…miles away…to see if other bees might clean them up. No luck. Mind you…now I have sticky honey in the bed of the truck that needs to be cleaned up, too. Good times. All that to just finally have the frames sitting out about 100 yards from my apiary in hopes that bees will find them and clean them up for me. As of this morning they had found them. I’m curious to see if this cleanup is a one-day kind of job or if it will take them more than one day to get all that honey out of those frames. Time will tell.  

On a sweet note though…we ended up with a good amount of honey from this extraction. We pulled three supers and extracted most all (a few frames that weren’t completely full or completely capped we just left to be returned to the hive) of the frames at least partially and got (I should have weighed it) almost a full five gallon bucket of honey. I stumbled upon ½ gallon mason jars at Walmart…6 ½ gallon jars for about $13. This proved to be the quickest and most efficient way for me to store the honey. Later, when I have more time and patience, we’ll be able to pour from these half gallon jars into smaller usable containers as needed. 

This extraction also brought about a first…honey sales!!! This is our third extraction in our third year of beekeeping and never have we ever accepted money for our honey. I had hoped we never would, that I would just always be giving it away. However, beekeeping has been somewhat expensive and the little beekeeper has been so anxious to incorporate sales into our small operation. If all goes as planned it looks like this year will provide a lot of honey so we went ahead and offered about ten jars for sale. They were spoken for rather quickly and we appreciate the support. The extra funds will help us absorb some of our mistakes and mishaps along the way. It will also aid in the cost of equipment/jars and in the terrible event that we lose our bees…we’ll be looking to purchase more!  

We did learn a lot in this crazy spur of the moment extraction process. I think the biggest lessons were we should never bring honey supers into the kitchen…the garage is probably our best option even if it is hot.  Cardboard on the floor would make cleanup easier once extraction is complete. We also would opt for an electric extractor over a manual extractor…that is until we price them and then maybe we would feel differently! We’ll have to hope the honey sales are solid enough to purchase that electric extractor when we need to purchase one of our own.  

In the next month we hope to clean up our blog. I need to learn more about how to organize and post…we are struggling with photos being included in the blog (hence no pictures in this post). We also need to bottle and sell more honey from this extraction before our next honey harvest. Then as fall rolls in we’ll try to stay active in hive management. We’d love to be able to over-winter all four hives and start strong next spring. If we are successful, we might be reaching the point of “having more honey than we know what to do with”…may we BEE so lucky! 

– Worker Bee 2021