The Second annual Honey harvest

Well, after all day Saturday, and most of the day Sunday, the extraction is now officially over. We had a decent turnout of people who came to help out, and a good time was had by everyone. Considering it was the first time using the new equipment, everything went very smoothly except for the problem of the pump hoses clogging.

We haven't measured the exact amount of honey yet, but somewhere around 100 gallons my rough estimate. Quite a bit less than we were hoping for, but still a good amount.

Here's some pictures:

The partial setup

It was a bit of a problem keeping the bees out of the room.



A steady stream of golden honey flowed into the bucket all day long...



...except when it refused to. Trying to unclog the pipes...again



Except for the occasional frame getting stuck, the new uncapper worked like a charm.



We had a great group of people helping.



Especially with scraping and loading frames.




Honey streaming off of the frames

-J

Harvest time!!

We're getting down to the end...harvest time is almost upon us. This is our first time using the new equipment, so we're going to see how it goes, and hopefully learn some new things!

The official harvest date (as of now) is next Saturday, September 25th. Everyone who's interested is invited to come help out with the extraction process, or just hang out and see how it's done. It was a blast last year, and should great experience this year too!


-J

Edit: Slight change of plans in the date.
Date Edit-Again :-|

The apples are ripe too! You really can't beat a good apple

straight off the tree, unless it's honey straight out of the hive....

Well, I guess I haven't posted here much this summer(between traveling, and school, and whatnot, I've been pretty busy). But then, as far as the beehive operations go, there hasn't really been all that much going on. Things have been going pretty smoothly throughout the summer.(at least, as smoothly as can be expected) We had about five of our 40 hives die, but the rest are running well.

One of the biggest problems we ran into is bees not drawing out the new frames. All the old, drawn out frames are full of honey, but they don't seem to want to touch the new ones. Why? I don't know, but it's likely slowed down honey production considerably. But, if it all goes really well, we may be pushing 200 gallons of honey.


Above: The hive on top of the old chicken coop--possibly one of our best hives.

The bees are in!

The bees came last Friday afternoon! We picked them up and proceeded to make the rounds, and introduce the bees to their new homes. About a dozen stings and 8 hours later, we had 18 colonies put in. We decided it was reasonably close enough to midnight to facilitate waiting until Saturday to finish.

By Saturday, we had the process fairly streamlined, and it went much faster. We now have 35 colonies running on five different properties, and we'll have a few more before June. So far it seems that all the queens are alive, and all the hives are happy.

I'll try to post some pictures of the adventure later.

-J

Hive stand building

We spent the Saturday before last at the shop

cutting...

bending...

and welding...

...the new stands for the hives to sit on.

The finished product.

Proof of their strength and sturdiness...

Then on Friday, we got them painted up.

In other news, three of our five hives that we wintered are healthy and active.

We also just finished sorting through about 50 boxes full of old brood frames. A surprisingly high amount were in decent condition. We're now in the process of painting and repairing.

Beekeeping time is coming up! We're scarcely a week away from when the bees arrive!

-J

The Great Honey Escapade of 2009

Wow, so....apparently I'm officially a beekeeper now. You may be wondering...how did that happen?

Well......

It started last summer when (I don't really know how) the idea of beekeeping popped up. Skepticism abounded. Especially in regards to the small appendage on the backside of a honeybee.

“They really won't bother you” said my dad “you won't even notice them. Besides, there could be a lot of money in it...”

“Sure,” says I “sounds like a good idea to me”

Thus started my venture into the great world of beekeeping.

Somehow (craigslist, I believe) the basic equipment needed for beekeeping was acquired. Information was gleaned, and hives were set up.

We checked them about every week or couple of weeks. Most of this time, I remained an observer to the process. Harvest time rolled around in early September. We, along with a bunch of friends who were interested, proceeded through the process of removing the frames from the hives, uncapping the frames, extracting, and bottling.

One lesson learned was, always expect everything to take longer than planned. One of the biggest hang-ups during the harvesting process was the tedious task of manually uncapping each frame.

“Wouldn't it be nice to have one of them there uncapping machines?" was a popular sentiment. Time to head back to good ole' Craigslist...

No sooner said than done, we soon found exactly what we were looking for. An uncapper! And not only that, but with it, enough equipment to make any hobby beekeeper see stars.

“Overboard? Who's going overboard? Last year was just a experiment. Now it's time to get serious!” We headed on an all day venture to pick up three trailer loads of equipment. Then came the job of sorting it all out....

Not many weeks later, we stood surveying neat piles of more bee equipment than any of us had ever seen at one time.

“It's not enough.”

“What?”

“It's not enough!”

“Yes, I heard you the first time. And....What??”

“If we have a good year, we'll run out of supers. Then what?”

*unintelegiblemumbling*

“Overboard? What are you talking about? Why does everyone keep saying that??”

Another long, (all-night this time) excursion, and here I am--ready to, in a matter of speaking “Go Big” in the world of beekeeping. About a month from now we will be setting out approximately 40 hives on various locations.

So there you have it. The highly condensed story of How I Got This Way

Our plans for the coming year.

1.Building a Honey house
2.Coming up with a brand name and a logo. (any ideas anyone?)
3.Finding a way to market our honey.


If anyone has any tips, ideas, experience or suggestions for any of those things, by all means share!


--Jairus

Naming a new blog is hard...

After much mind-numbing thought(ok- only about 38 minutes), the task of naming this new blog has lost it appeal. My feeble attempt at naming this new blog shows just how much blood, sweat and tears I have invested up to this point(see the list below). This blog will chronicle our endeavors into the finer art of beekeeping. If you have a brilliant idea, please share! Thanks and happy honey days to you!

Global Swarming (one of my favorites)
Honeycomb Hideout
Honey Dues
Bees Cause
Hive Minded
The Cellar Dweller
Bee Loved

"They might, or they might not, you never can tell with bees!" - Winnie the Pooh