Sunday, January 12, 2014

Christmas eve honey extraction

A beautiful photo of the frames for the "supers" which is the box that goes above brood box. The "supers" is the box where all the honey is stored by the little lady bees and the brood box is where the queen resides and all little workers get made that keep the colony fed and provide us with honey.. I use these to replace any frames that get damaged in the extraction process.

first full frame of the day . Rae took the pic from a distance lol
We had run out of our own honey that I had last extracted in autumn and we were forced to buy honey in town to use in our soap and for our own personal consumption. I have been working on a restoration project at the Institute of Objects Conservation in nearby Twee Riviere and had not had the time to extract honey.
After tasting the bought honey, Rae insisted that our honey tasted far better and gave up eating her banana, honey and cinnamon toast which she eats every morning. So the pressure was on and  I also knew that my hives were laden with honey that the nectar that the bees had harvested through winter from aloe, heather and certain Protea species and that honey is yummy!
My two helpers
On Christmas Eve, we harvested honey from 10 hives and got 3.5 x 20 liter buckets of honey. Thought I would just mention that on the last Christmas Eve, I was stuck in the middle of a river in a Land Rover with an artist and his paintings, a Dominee (Minister) and a nurse (the Dominee's wife) and no lights......it was awesome and I will tell the story some time!
Yahoo honey flow

2 comments:

Dani said...

That's a lot of honey!! How many hives have you got?

African Bliss said...

Dani I took honey out of 10 hives and some of the frames had turned to sugar already. So considering that, it was a good haul. I always take out honey at least twice a year and with the money I make from selling some of my honey, I will always buy at least one empty hive, therefore increasing my colonies by at least 2 hives per year.