The main flow of honey for the summer has now stopped and it is now the time of the year to harvest the main crop from the hives. Its was a hard days work to remove the frames of honey (minus the bees) and ship them to a safe “bee free” place for extraction. I go through each frame and inspect it to check the honey is ready before it is taken off the hive. More importantly, half the crop is left behind for the bees so they have enough stores to sustain themselves. The following weekend the wax cappings were removed (We use these to make beeswax candles later in the year)  and the honey was spun from the frames using a hand cranked extractor. This is a laborious job and makes everything very sticky. Once extracted our honey is passed through three sieves of ever smaller mesh to remove any wax. The empty frames are now back on the hives for the bees to pick clean (and to fill up again in September when the heather flowers)
The honey then is left in a settling tank for a week. This allows all the fine bubbles that are introduced in the spinning process to float to the top. (these are harmless, but give the honey a slightly cloudy appearance). You can see in the photo on the left all the mini bubbles that have surfaced. All that is left is to tap the honey into jars and add a label.

If you are interested in purchasing a jar of the 2019 Summer crop please contact us.

Well what a change, July has been kind with the weather and things are going well for the bees. The busy “beekeeping” part of the year is now over, (The swarming season is drawing to an end) . I had to pick up a couple of late swarms from various places and it seems everything has been pushed back this year. Collecting the bees this late makes it harder to get enough food for them to survive the winter, so I will monitor their progress and feed them if they look weak.

The next big job will be to harvest this years main crop of honey. My stock of honey to sell is running very low at the moment, (thank-you to all the people who have bought a jar), it enables me to keep going buying next year equipment and to continue keeping our valuable pollinators. The hives have been rapidly filling up throughout this month so hopefully there will be a reasonable crop. I tend not to look inside the hive too often at this time of year, as every time you go into a beehive it takes them a few days to repair any damage you cause. Its more of a case of leave them alone and let them get on with it during this month. I only intervene when something is wrong or needs immediate attention.

You can check the the state of the hive by giving it a gentle lift to check the weight. (this is called hefting) a good strong colony will have a nice heavy hive of honey, The weaker ones will be lighter.

I have been busy teaching beekeeping at Blackhorse Apiaries over the spring, it a great place to learn if you want to get started with bees.

In the next few weeks I will take off the honey from the hives and then comes the sticky process of getting the honey out and into jars. More on that… next month.