57 Lbs of Chemical Free Honey

After removing the escape boards, I lean them against the front of the hive so that the bees can walk back into their hive.

The bees are given the harvested honey comb back (boxes in the center) so that they can harvest the remaining honey from the comb and store it in the hives (to the left and to the right). The bees will lick these frames clean and then I can store the comb for the winter (after 24 hours in the freezer).

I have assessed the final weight of the filtered honey and it came to 57 lbs. Excellent! This is equal to an almost full 5 gallon bucket of honey!

They honey is selling a lot faster than I had anticipated. I will be sold out in a couple of weeks, and I have only told a handful of people that I have honey for sale.

I am saving 15 lbs of honey, for myself, to hold me over until the next harvest.

Now I just have to make sure that my bees have adequate foods stores for winter and that the queens are healthy and laying well to ensure that I will have bees in the Spring when I open the hives up.

On Thanksgiving I will wrap the hives in tar paper or something similar to insulate them against the cold of winter, while ensuring that there is adequate ventilation (to allow moisture to escape the hives), and 2 entrances for the bees to come in and out of, when weather provides, to use the bathroom and clean the hives.

Over the winter I will purchase, assemble, and paint 3 more complete hives for the new bees I am going to install in the spring. This will give me a total of 5 hives, which is about the highest number of hives I will have time for, with a new baby on the way in early February and two full time businesses to run.

Its been a great year of beekeeping. I learned a lot about bees, and a lot about myself. At age 31 it amazes me that this journey through life continues to be so astonishing. I am so grateful for that.

Honey Harvest

This picture is of the honey comb being uncapped.

Today I put the escape boards on my bee hives. This contraption is like a one-way door for bees. Once placed on the hives (between the surplus honey and the bottom chambers where the baby bees are raised) the bees will leave the hive within 2-3 days. Then, the honey can be harvested without much of a fight, and with very few bees to contend with. The trouble is that the bee escape is not really a one way door....if left on for more than 3-4 days, the bees will learn how to go back in, and the honey supers will be full of bees again.

Thursday morning, while it is still mostly dark, and cold, I will pull the surplus honey off of the hives. I will store the supers in my house, and after dark on Thursday I will extract the honey once the bees are in their hive for the night, and will not be out and about to try and take their honey back.

All in all, it has been a very very impressive first year of bee keeping. I am expecting between 30 and 50 lbs of honey total. Many people told me to expect very little honey, if any, my first year, so to have a harvest at all is very rewarding. There are still many new aspects of bee keeping between now and spring (when I start my new 1st year hives), but to make it to the honey harvest, given the pitfalls that I experienced this year, is a rewarding feeling. I didn't think I would feel this good about the honey harvest. Its wonderful.

I will post again after the honey harvest, with pictures of the process, and the removal of the surplus honey. I will take a lot of photos and post them in the next blog.

Side note: I have had so many people ask me what sort of stuff is needed to be a beekeeper that I thought it might be helpful to post this link: http://www.sfbee.org/pdfs/equipment.pdf