The First Honey Harvest - an event of great joy.

You likely already know my priority with beekeeping - to support a healthy hive of honey bees - while they teach and inspire me. 

Honey has never been a driver for me - I think that a beekeeper who is 'hungry' for honey ends up exploiting the bees in her care - leading to unhealthy hives.   Many beekeepers have taken off too much honey to either consume or sell, and then feed the bees high fructose corn syrup or sugar water as an unhealthy, inferior substitute.  

Ok - stepping down from the soap box - a surplus of honey can be shared with humans - which is wonderful!   By July, the bees had stored over 150 pounds of honey in their hive - wow. 

My friend Wendy documented the honey harvest and Rich shared his basement 'brewhouse' space to do the work. 

I wanted to find out the simplest, lowest cost way to harvest honey - and after some research online found a wonderful video of the 'crush and strain' method done my 'online mentor' Linda.  See here for the video:  Linda's Bees.

I first used a bee escape from Brushy Mountain Bee Farm to separate the boxes with honey frames (called honey supers) that I was going to harvest from the rest of the hive.  The bee escape allows the bees on the honey supers to move down into the rest of the hive, but not get back up into the honey supers.  This worked really well with only a few bees left on the honey supers (vs. thousands) after having it on for a few days.  I love this option, as it's chemical free.  Often, beekeepers use a chemical to make the bees leave the honey frames. 

I pulled 22 frames off of the hive and put them into a plastic bin with a lid (to keep bees from flying back onto the honey frames).   I took them around to our screened front porch as a 'holding area' to let any hiding bees fly off before taking them into the house.  No stray bees were found!

I had set up a little work area in the basement - with the recommended cardboard to minimize honey tracking everywhere!   

Here's the set up:

Plastic bins and nice stock pot - donated from Rich's brewing supplies (many of you know that my husband is a top of the line homebrewer);  I used a baking pan to cut the comb from the frames; I bought a bottling pail (which you could make yourself and just buy the 'gate') and 3 mesh filters that fit nicely on the rim of the pail.  Total bought was about $45 including the shipping.  This was a huge difference from the hundreds of dollars to buy a honey extractor and the other supplies that are often 'needed.'

With my little harvest it was perfect.  If I have a larger honey harvest with the addition of hives I'm keeping for others, it could require a bit more of a set up.

Key steps:

The honey comb has thin caps of wax over each honey cell, which indicates it's finished honey (vs. nectar).

I used a fork to uncap each side of honey on the frame. I just lightly run the fork down the length of the frame and it nicely breaks the caps to open the cells of honey.  After uncapping, I took a sharp knife and cut the comb out of the frame - as I'm doing above.  Next year, I'll use a bigger roasting pan - this one was a little too small for the job. 



An action shot taken by Wendy Zent of cutting the comb out of the frame.  It was really beautiful.





I used a potato masher to mash the comb. 

I then poured the chunked honey and comb into a filter which was resting on the bottling pail.  After researching, I decided to just filter once, which leaves the honey pretty raw, but most of the pollen and comb are well filtered out (some people dont' like 'bits' in their honey!



Above is the honey comb that's been filtered overnight.  Underneath the filter is a pail of beautiful honey ready for bottling. 


This is a pic that shows one of my critical 'learning moments' (trying to forgive myself for screwing up and affecting the hardworking bees).  These are comb cells packed with precious pollen.  It's different colors from different sources (thanks neighbors!).  You can see how it's packed in layers.  I should have left the frames that had much pollen in the hive for them.  They need this source of protein and nutrition to have healthy brood -esp. as they are building up their hive population for the winter.  Now I  know.  : p

Honey harvest!   The bottling gate really makes the job easier and less messy.  Otherwise, you would use a soup ladel to get the honey into jars.  I ordered sweet little honey jars - but ended up loving the simple jelly jars for my own personal daily honey use.  For the experienced beekeeper, you'll have already noticed that the honey is flowing over top of the honey gate.  Hee hee hee - when I screwed the honey gate into the hole in the pail, I had wondered if there was a certain way to position it.  Of course there was - and I did it upside down!  It wasn't that bad - but Rich was a little horrified by the incorrectness of it all.  

I'll leave you with one of Wendy's 'art pics'  - beautiful chunks of wonderful honey comb. 

It felt sacred and celebratory to harvest some of their surplus honey.  I think this is the gift to the hobby beekeeper - relishing each moment. 

My backyard honey bees - 2010.

So heading into the winter of 2009, I fully expected that my first year struggling hive would not make it to spring.  (I know, I'm talking about 2009 - but it's to catch you up since my last post about my backyard hive - I promise to keep you better posted in 2011!).

I didn't think it would make it because they didn't finish making any honey to get them through the winter.  There were lots of honeycomb cells with what looked more like raw nectar than finished honey.  Still, I had given them a healthy mixture of biodynamic tea during the fall - and had a healthy hive from Richard Hosey to provide a good start.

Internal feeder - feeding honey to ensure the bees get through the winter. 

Well, I ended up feeding them honey during the winter (I actually went to ValuMarket and bought jars of local honey - thanks Joe Williard! 

I fed them this honey which miraculously got them through the winter.  This is usually a no-no, as feeding the bees honey from another hive has the risk of introducing diseases or bacterias.  At that point though, I felt that I had to do something, and the hive had nothing to lose. 

By April/May, I was in the hive doing the post-winter inspection - and they looked great! 

The queen looked wonderful and healthy...



find the queen....

The hive continued to grow in population during the spring and early summer - and made a good amount of honey. 



The hives grows with lots of frames of honey! 

The bottom two boxes are where the queen, brood (larvae), and lots of workers reside.  They also had some frames of honey and pollen in this section.  I pulled some of the honey out of this area to help ensure they didn't become 'honey bound'.  If they have too much honey in the brood areas, they feel cramped and run out of room for more brood.  This brings on plans to split the hive population by swarming.  Giving them plenty of space for brood helps prevent them from swarming, if that's what you're after. 

You can also see in the pic above the lovely thyme that I've planted around the hive.  It's too close to the hive for them to really forage in the thyme blossoms, but I like to think that it makes them happy anyway.  I've also got some great lemon balm in this part of the 'bee yard' - which is another healthy plant that honey bees love.  Thanks to my friend Heather and her mom for the lemon balm. 

Another thing to notice in the above pic - you might remember me writing about the hive in summer - they like to hang out on the 'front porch' of the hive on the hot days/evenings of summer. 

With such a healthy hive and so much honey, I knew it would soon be time for my first honey harvest....

A hidden KY gem: the annual Bluegrass Beekeeping School

As promised, I'll share with the the top 6 honey bee highlights of 2010.  Here's the first....

As of a few years ago, one of the annual highlights in my life is most definitely attending the day long Bluegrass Beekeeping School.  Click on the link to find out about 6 KY beekeeping schools in 2011. 
It's one of those amazing events that many people don't realize we have in Kentucky.

While they have the schools across the state, from Hazard to Henderson, my 'home' school is the main event in Frankfort on the Kentucky State University Campus.  Always held on a full Saturday in March, this is a gathering of over 300 honey bee fans.  This isn't your grandfather's beekeeping gathering. This is an amazing place where kids, parents, old-timers, new-schoolers, women and men, country farmers, urban gardeners, and suburban dwellers come together to learn from and inspire each other.  

There's a beginner's beekeeping tract of classes - perfect for the first and second year beekeepers.  There are also plenty of really interesting advanced classes.  The workshops I attended in 2010 included a presentation on the nine species of honey bees around the world.  Did you know about the stingless Mayan honey bees?  Or the giant honey bees of southern Asia?  What about the different species that our local beekeepers choose?  Carnolian (from Slovenia), the Italian (the most popular here), and the Russian.  Each is known for certain traits and each beekeeper has her/his own preference.

My favorite workshop was given by Tiffany Gillespie who lives with her husband and son near Mammoth Cave.  She talked about the special type of hives they are using - called a top bar hive (tbh).  Having the opportunity to see the hives that they built and hearing about their experience was inspiring.  It planted the seed that has since then been nurtured into an exciting venture for 2011.  More on this in upcoming posts. 

The school provides a place for vendors who sell beekeeping supplies, bee products (like Toni Downs' famous lip balm), and other fun and important beekeeping items. 

If you're interested in becoming a beekeeper or just want to learn more about honey bees - plan to attend one of the KY beekeeping schools. 

The 2011 Bluegrass Beekeeping School will be on March 12th.   I'll even be presenting this year! 
I'll be providing the first "urban beekeeping" workshop at the BBS.  I expect there will be other experienced urban beekeepers there - so there will be a good space to share and discuss our sometimes unique needs and experiences.  Thanks to Phil Craft, the Kentucky State Apiarist, for getting me on the agenda. 

Rich, my husband, has even said he wants to join me at the school this year!  Should be fun....