Honey Harvest

Big R just got home from his work trip to Kobenhaven aka Copenhagen.  Since it was a weekend without kid soccer tourney and weather was warm, it was time to harvest!

Supplies:

• bee suits
• smoker
• hive tongs
• hive scraper
• flow hive accessories - tubes, key, pliers, etc
• Jars!  (11 jars of 16 oz with lids, 6 24 oz jars)

We harvested from the OG hive first since we saw capped honey through the side window and was able to see honey in the frames.

Lessons learned from the OG hive while taking honey:

1. Put cap back on where the key is so the bees don't go in it
2. Put the tubes in right away and try to seal them as best as possible so bees don't go in
1. The 16 oz jars worked the best for this
3. One of the tubes is shorter than the other and needs additional height for collection
1. Note - need more tubes for multi-hive collection
4. One frame was uneven and allowed for the bees to get in/out the side and made for a challenging collection.

We have 3 flow frames to collect from.  We were able to get about 11 jars nearly full from the OG flow hive.

Next up... Big Blue.

So this was the big test this year since Big R bought some knock off flow hives.  They were less expensive but just different enough to wonder if they would really work.  While watching Big Blue and these frames we noticed that they just didn't really seem to like them.  They were not filling the outside frames and it seemed like they just were not as busy.  Big R unlocked the flow frames to gather on frame 1 and got nothing.  (It was on the far left or outside) when looking at the frames.)  He then unlocked 2 and 3 and while lil momma was inside, he was unprepared for the honey to flow.  Lil momma ended up having to run to give a collection jar for the honey.  These girls were also a little more testy... the bees kicked it up a notch in the activity level and the head butting.

We had 5 frames and filled about 3 24 oz jars from frames 2 and 3.  There was not really much honey to speak of in frames 1, 4 and 5.  They do fill from the middle out, so it may have been a matter of time and resources.

Lessons learned:

1. Fishing the bees out of the jars is not fun and leaves trails of honey to attract predators (yellow jackets/hornets/wasps)
2. Large mouth jars can have two tubes but the seal is not great
3. The knock off frames are just different enough that they don't have the tubes with the lip so can't go directly from one hive to the other
4. Need better smoker fuel.  The little pellets just don't last very long.
1. Don't use cardboard since there are chemicals in the cardboard.