To extract or not to extract - my experience today.

[Amari]

Following on from a recent thread (hope it's OK to start afresh on an allied theme)

http://www.beekeepingforum.co.uk/showthread.php?t=39538

I'm about to go on holiday for a week.The OSR has been out for 5 weeks and now fading. A flow started early April. Despite the cold weather my three strongest hives have each slowly filled 1-2 supers i.e. all comb drawn out and honey seemingly filling all ten frames. Capped cells = only 5% of total but shake test negative and Brix reading on the refractometer = 18 even on outer frames.
I therefore decided to extract today. I only got c.45 lbs from four boxes despite a prolonged spin in powered extractor!
Probable reasons: the honey in the capped cells was half crystallised. Close inspection of many cells before extraction showed many were only half full. The spun honey was very viscous.
Suggested interpretation: OSR nectar brought in 5 weeks ago is ripe/over-ripe. The cold weather stalled the flow so that the cells were not topped up as the honey in each cell shrank as water was evaporated in the ripening process.
Lesson: beware leaving your supers on too long - I suspect I'd have got even less that 45 lbs if I'd waited post-holiday

 

[Nige.Coll]

Heated uncapping tray sorts the rest out.

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[Amari]

Heated uncapping tray sorts the rest out.

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How do you mean - by melting the whole comb on the heated tray? I'm not that desperate!

 

[WoodenBeam]

Seeing exactly the same in supers I have looked at (on hives) - don't think there's going to be much liquid honey spun out around here!
On a positive note they did draw some comb out for me so good for future crops, as for the OSR - it might stay for a June gap or I'll try undersupering to feed a nuc transferred into a full size hive..........

 

[oliver90owner]

I suspect I'd have got even less that 45 lbs if I'd waited post-holiday

If the weather does not improve during your holiday, you may have come back to depleted honey frames as well as further crystallised honey.

The honey was not capped because the bees were not wasting energy on cappings which may need to be removed in the short term (or because the flow was insufficient to finish filling the cells - think here a full cell of nectar doesn't make a full cell of honey) . Honey is hygroscopic, so doubt it it was simply losing moisture by simple evaporation. It must be kept at lower water content to avoid fermentation. The bees have the situation under control, but they cannot alter the weather!

A very different OSR season than Finny experiences, which admirably demonstrates the differences between UK hive productivity compared to his short season but with better weather.

 

[Finman]

.
I do not extract uncapped honey.
.

 

[Amari]

.
I do not extract uncapped honey.
.

If it's ripe, why not?

 

[Nige.Coll]

How do you mean - by melting the whole comb on the heated tray? I'm not that desperate!

Sometimes it's the only option. If you put it for the bees to clear they spread it around and it sets the later crop solid in the frames too.
Being desperate for honey isn't even a factor.
The odd frame isn't a problem but you think differently when it's 100+ solid frames of concrete.

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[Finman]

If it's ripe, why not?

Uncapped honey is not ripe.

If you extract one box, most of honey will be consumed in greasing the extraction process.
.

 

[Finman]

The odd frame isn't a problem but you think differently when it's 100+ solid frames of concrete.

If you have 10 supers full of honey, you do not need to ask help from forum then.

That is not a reason to extract one unrippen honey if you may have 10 boxes in your dreams.

I have harvested 40 years rape honey and it is not end of the world if you have few frames crystallized honey. Dandelion honey is easy to crystallize too in sidemost frames. Bees clean them when I put the frames between brood frames later in summer.

But However, it is better to be careful when you take honey out of hives. IT crystallizes easier outside than inside the hive.
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.

 

[Nige.Coll]

As always I'm unsure if your having a dig or answering more than one post at the same time.

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[Somerford]

To further add questions to this thread :

Presuming I have well more than 10 supers of OSR to extract shortly..... if, say 30% is uncapped, I have heard about warming rooms (almost the opposite of a chiller) where you can heat the ambient temperature to keep the OSR in a more liquid state and fend off crystalisation until you can extract a day or so later.

Can you remove water in this way from the uncapped cells (presuming you're venting the excess moisture outside) ?

Or do you need some sort of warming fan contraption that a stack of supers sit on to gently circulate warmed air through the stack removing moisture along the way ?

The point made earlier about heated uncapping trays removing the need to worry about fermentation, while there was goodwill in the proposal, in fact, food hygiene regs state that honey that is collected from the uncapping tray (if heated) cannot be mixed with the extracted crop and can only be sold as cooking / bakers honey so it doesn't solve the issue of some uncapped cells in the extractor.

I know we tie ourselves in knots over honey at times but it's just our luck to have a year where the water content is higher to ruin a crop and I wonder what small and medium scale producers can do about it....?!

KR

Somerford

 

[drex]

Uncapped honey is not ripe.

If you extract one box, most of honey will be consumed in greasing the extraction process.
.

As already mentioned on one previous post (cannot recall which), our rape season is probably longer than yours in Finland. It will last about six weeks. I am lazy and only extract right at the end. I might get a few frames where some has set, but most will spin out. However I do extract within a few hours of putting in clearers and keep the frames in a hot summerhouse.
A lot of the honey is still uncapped, even then, but comes out at 18-20% water content, which is good enough for me

 

[Uncle Betty]

Uncapped honey is not ripe.
.

Logically, that can't be true. Otherwise no honey would ever be capped.

 

[Hivemaker.]

I know we tie ourselves in knots over honey at times but it's just our luck to have a year where the water content is higher to ruin a crop and I wonder what small and medium scale producers can do about it....?!

Buy... or build yourself a honey drier.

 

[Nige.Coll]

There are lots of people that use heated uncapping trays and sell honey as normal.

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[Nige.Coll]

The point made earlier about heated uncapping trays removing the need to worry about fermentation, while there was goodwill in the proposal, in fact, food hygiene regs state that honey that is collected from the uncapping tray (if heated) cannot be mixed with the extracted crop and can only be sold as cooking / bakers honey so it doesn't solve the issue of some uncapped cells in the extractor.

It wasn't to remove the worry of fermentation it was a way of removing honey that has crystallised from the comb.
Where does it state that in the food hygiene regs ? I cannot find it.

 

[Amari]

To further add questions to this thread :



Can you remove water in this way from the uncapped cells (presuming you're venting the excess moisture outside) ?
Or do you need some sort of warming fan contraption that a stack of supers sit on to gently circulate warmed air through the stack removing moisture along the way ?
KR
Somerford

Yes. Going back to the OP, I put the frames of one box in my heated cabinet @ 25C for a few days (the other three boxes were removed from the hives 30 mins before extracting). In the cabinet I put a tray of calcium chloride - used for keeping boats and caravans dry.
You won't want to read this: one frame, which probably had held brood in the past, generated a couple of wax moth larvae. Yuk - but maybe income generation in the off season selling larvae to fishermen?
I'm not advocating CaCl2, but I enjoy experimenting.

 

[Amari]

Following on from a recent thread (hope it's OK to start afresh on an allied theme)

http://www.beekeepingforum.co.uk/showthread.php?t=39538

I'm about to go on holiday for a week.The OSR has been out for 5 weeks and now fading. A flow started early April. Despite the cold weather my three strongest hives have each slowly filled 1-2 supers i.e. all comb drawn out and honey seemingly filling all ten frames. Capped cells = only 5% of total but shake test negative and Brix reading on the refractometer = 18 even on outer frames.
I therefore decided to extract today. I only got c.45 lbs from four boxes despite a prolonged spin in powered extractor!
Probable reasons: the honey in the capped cells was half crystallised. Close inspection of many cells before extraction showed many were only half full. The spun honey was very viscous.
Suggested interpretation: OSR nectar brought in 5 weeks ago is ripe/over-ripe. The cold weather stalled the flow so that the cells were not topped up as the honey in each cell shrank as water was evaporated in the ripening process.
Lesson: beware leaving your supers on too long - I suspect I'd have got even less that 45 lbs if I'd waited post-holiday

Update: I returned from holiday on 17 May an was amazed to find a mega-flow in progress (the temperatures in Suffolk that week were warm). I had distributed my 6 working colonies around three sites so that four were near OSR. The other two were near c. 3 acres of dandelions. I have now extracted most of the crop into buckets which weigh 274 lbs. A peep yesterday suggests another 4 boxes to take off. I think it's the best harvest I've ever had. Apologies to the bees for the disgruntlement expressed in the OP.

 

[ugcheleuce]

Uncapped honey is not ripe.

Yes it is. You do a shake test and then a brix test.

Oh, wait...

...shake test negative and Brix reading on the refractometer = 18 even on outer frames.