Thinking ahead...honey

thepliedes · Jun 5, 2012

I began my preparations for honey harvesting too late (IMO) last year and everything was rushed. I want to prevent this happening but I wondered what method you used and thought effective for clearing the supers and when supposedly cleared, do you brush the bees and individually wrap the frames and replace in supers or just cover the supers after brushing them? Thanks.

Cazza · Jun 5, 2012

thepliedes said:
I began my preparations for honey harvesting too late (IMO) last year and everything was rushed. I want to prevent this happening but I wondered what method you used and thought effective for clearing the supers and when supposedly cleared, do you brush the bees and individually wrap the frames and replace in supers or just cover the supers after brushing them? Thanks.

You will find different recommendations for clearing honey depending on the user. i use standard porter escapes because that's what I have in the shed.
When cleared, there is no need to wrap the frames, just stick them back into the super and take away to extract.

If there are a few bees remaining, I shake them off and by the time I have wheelbarrowed the supers bumpily back to the house they are generally empty.
Easy peasy lemon squeazy!
Cazza

drex · Jun 5, 2012

I find the rhombus escape much more efficient than porters. Brush hardly needed - it gets sticky if used too much.

MandF · Jun 5, 2012

Depends on how many supers you are clearing at once, we have used porter escapes with middling success.

The easiest way we found was having an empty super to one side covered with a sheet, then removing a frame, getting the bees off by shaking and bee brush to gently coax out any with their heads in cells, then place it into the spare super and cover again.

more labour intensive than using porter escapes when they work, but you cannot leave them on too long as the bees can propolise them and make them ineffective. You also need to cover the supers when removing them using porter escapes of course.