I brought in our first honey harvest this evening 
Had to use the big trailer on the Disco to drag back the full load.
Actually, I only took 1 frame of stores from Colony 1 and replaced it with a new frame of foundation. The bees were too shocked to react much, but didn't like being brushed off the frame with some Hemp Agrimony flower heads.
I'm hoping they still have time to make up the loss; they have nearly a full Langstroth brood box of stores in the top box and I'm not sure how much in the bottom box (I haven't done a complete opening up for 10 days or so).
I plan to start treating them for varroa sometime soon (although the latest sticky board didn't seem too bad) so I wanted to get some honey off them before it gets ruined by the Thymol.
I've cut out the comb into a bowl, mashed it all up and now it's straining into another tupperware-type bowl, through muslin, with the lid on to prevent moisture getting in. Short video will be up when it gets to the jars.
According to my calculations, one full Langstroth brood frame of honey is about 1.6 litres of volume (!). This seems hard to believe, but we'll see how much drips out I guess.
Not sure what to do with the very sticky, still dripping, frame the comb was mostly cut out from. Can I slap a feeding eke on the hive and let them go nuts cleaning up the remains, or will they start rebuilding the empty frame in situ and give me problems?
FG
Had to use the big trailer on the Disco to drag back the full load.
Actually, I only took 1 frame of stores from Colony 1 and replaced it with a new frame of foundation. The bees were too shocked to react much, but didn't like being brushed off the frame with some Hemp Agrimony flower heads.
I'm hoping they still have time to make up the loss; they have nearly a full Langstroth brood box of stores in the top box and I'm not sure how much in the bottom box (I haven't done a complete opening up for 10 days or so).
I plan to start treating them for varroa sometime soon (although the latest sticky board didn't seem too bad) so I wanted to get some honey off them before it gets ruined by the Thymol.
I've cut out the comb into a bowl, mashed it all up and now it's straining into another tupperware-type bowl, through muslin, with the lid on to prevent moisture getting in. Short video will be up when it gets to the jars.
According to my calculations, one full Langstroth brood frame of honey is about 1.6 litres of volume (!). This seems hard to believe, but we'll see how much drips out I guess.
Not sure what to do with the very sticky, still dripping, frame the comb was mostly cut out from. Can I slap a feeding eke on the hive and let them go nuts cleaning up the remains, or will they start rebuilding the empty frame in situ and give me problems?
FG
