Putting Labor Day to good use with a labor of love!
Mid August to September is generally set aside for checking the hives and deciding how many frames and/or supers will be harvested for the honey and what should be left for the bees to over winter with.
We had all ready planned to check Hive 1 and leave all their honey for their winter use. Hive 1 consists of 2 deep supers and one medium super filled with honey. Hive 2 we will check for honey flow and hopefully have some honey for us to over winter with!
Hive 2: The top medium super had capped honey on the frames:
Frame by frame, we took went through the super, smoking the bees, then shaking the frame knocking the bees off, and then brushing the remaining bees off. The frames went into an empty super in the garage. Frame by frame we repeated this process.
On to the second super. It was full of capped honey! We were so excited. Repeating the above process, we went through the 10 frames. Then we brought the supers into the kitchen.
We had rented an extractor. The extractor handled three frames at a time and was hand cranked. We had a LONG afternoon!
A hot knife helped uncap the honey.
SUCCESS!!! Look at our beautiful honey!
