Honey Time!

Today was a big day! My husband came up to the hive to help. It was his first time there. The boxes are so heavy with honey now I can't lift them on my own. I guess I need to start lifting weights to get my strength up (I didn't think I was that weak but these puppies are heavy!)

With my husband there helping with the heavy lifting we also had extra hands for pictures. This allows for some peeks into what I do that I could not otherwise share.

Smoking the hive to calm the bees and send them down out of harms way.

I am standing uphill, I have already taken off 

the top cover, inner cover and 1 honey super... its still really tall!

Looking at the queen excluder, this is what keeps the queen 

in the lower part of the hive. It also keeps a separation from 

our honey and the bees honey.

I use a hive tool (pry bar) to take apart the hive. 

The bees super glue it together! Its hard to get apart.

Inspecting the frame for eggs and larve. 

This is how you know your queen is present and healthy.

A peek down.

The hive tool is also used to loosen the frames. 

Those are glued in too. The bees use more glue 

than a whole football stadium of kindergarteners.

More inspection.

Showing my husband some babies (larvae).

The boxes get stacked up on the side as we remove 

and check each box.

A capped frame of honey ready for harvest!

Scrapping the honeycomb from the frame.

I finished scrapping so my husband took
the opportunity to taste his first bit o' honey.

Let the straining begin!

So now the honey and the wax will separate. The honey will drip into the bucket and the wax will stay in the strainer. I will be checking on it tomorrow to see how the straining is going. I plan to return to the hive this weekend to get more frames and continue the gathering of the honey. It will be fun to see how much honey we get from that one honey super this week (one honey super holds ten frames of honey, today we removed two). Then we will be working on the next one and the next and the next. We have four honey supers to strain. Each super holds approximately 35 pounds of honey. Its looking to be a big year for honey!

So there it is, the start of something sweet. I hope you enjoyed your visit to the hive. The girls have been so busy this year.

Blessings!

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