Thursday, August 26, 2010

Harvest time - August Part III

I've just finished extracting seven super's with various amounts in each, some full others just had a small amount per frame. I didn't have a set of scales with me but a very rough approximation going by the 3 buckets its about 6 gallons worth. No idea how many 12 oz / 340 gram jars this will fill but needless to say it will take awhile but I think I will need a day or two to recover as my arms and shoulder muscles are throbbing.

Sunday, August 22, 2010

Harvest time - August Part II

I decided as I will be out of action for approx 6 weeks after a minor surgery at the end of August I need to clear the super's and get the honey extracted this week. This morning the rain held off for long enough for me to fit the clearer boards with the porter bee escapes so now I will need to wait a day or two before most of the bees should move down into the brood chambers. There will always be a small number of bees who refuse to leave, but I will give them a special treat of Apiinvert to keep them happy.

Taken from - Paynes Bee farm website
Apiinvert is a syrup of extremely high purity. It is made up exclusively of sucrose and its building blocks fructose and glucose. For that reason Apiinvert contains no forms of sugar that strain the digestive tract. The high proportion of fructose means that the product shows little tendency to granulate in the honeycombs, even at low temperatures and so prevents starvation of the bees.

Saturday, August 21, 2010

Harvest time - August

Harvesting
Its almost time to put on the clearer boards with porter bee escapes to clear the bees down into the brood chamber so the super's can be removed and extracted. I have 7 super's and one national sized brood chamber ready to be removed. During the last inspection I found several of the frames were only about 60% capped, I don't like to remove them until the vast majority 80% are capped. The poor weather over the last few days hasn't been ideal for the colonies to cap cells but I really need to get the super's off and start to treat all the hives and feed a few of the smaller colonies I started this year as they are still a little light on capped stores.

Testing the Honey
I bought a refractometer so I can test the honey, hopefully it will be about 18-20% which is perfect to extract and allow it to rest for a day or two for the bubbles to rise whilst kept warm before I fill the 12oz hexagon jars.

More to follow in the next week or two.

Sunday, August 15, 2010

Poly Hive - 15th August

I decided to buy a poly langstroth hive and all plastic frames to trial after I had read so many good reports from others about them.




The hive I bought to start with was a double medium, floor, feeder and roof. I also bought enough one piece medium plastic frames and spent an hour out in the sun painting the molten wax over them as I didn't have a small fleece roller at the time. Below is a video of John a friend of mine showing how to prepare the frames.





I shook swarmed the prime swarm from the Dartington hive into the poly hive and fed them about 3 gallons of feed over the next few weeks. Ideally it was a little late in the season to shook swarm a colony onto new undrawn frames but after a slow start they quickly drew out most of the frames and stored massive amounts of the Apinvert feed I was giving them. The queen began to lay large patches of eggs and by the end of August they looked very happy in their new home.

Friday, August 6, 2010

Inside a TBH August

Decided to film the TBH for the last time this year and put all the footage into one video before I start to think about preparing them for winter.

To see this movie on YouTube Click here




Here is several minutes worth of the August footage.

To see this Movie on YouTube Click here