So, we extracted honey from Hive #1 on July 17, 2010. Had one well needed helper as well to make us a team of three.
Oh yes, most importantly, the names of the Hives are no longer #1, #2 and #3. #2 and #3 don't have names yet but Hive #1 is now called Queen Cleopatra's Hive. Obviously, the actually honey will be named Queen Cleopatra's Honey. (Queen Cleo for short.) Good name?
The super on Queen Cleo is half size. A serrated bread knife, instead of a hot honey knife as I believe they call them, was utilized to uncap the comb. This idea came from this website/blog: http://forum.beemaster.com/index.php?topic=17854.0.
Why spend the extra dough when you don't need to?
Having 2 people, instead of one, to uncap the slides and one person walking back and forth from Queen Cleo's hive and the extraction spot replacing the slides and ensuring their were no bees on the slides sped up the process substantially. Having to slice the capped part of the comb extremely thin is a time consuming process and having 2 slicers instead of one is almost necessary.
To the Honey! This years honey came out a much darker color than last year's production from this hive. Queen Cleo last year produced a golden yellow honey. This year the honey was much browner. A completely different color. On this point, Hive #3 (no name yet) also had inserted into it 7 missing frames into its super. Those bees had produced quite a bit of comb and honey in their super which was kept in a separate metal bowl which overflowed and that bowl was placed into a larger metal bowl to collect any overflow of comb or honey, but more on this issue later. Yet, the comb itself that they built as well as the honey they had produced in Hive #3, to date, had no color whatsoever. It was completely clear. Now this hive is only a few months old. Queen Cleo's first production was after an entire summer and it turned out yellow. Now, after one year, Queen Cleo's honey is now a deep brown. The theory that I've come up with that the bees have not inserted some sort of pollen or other substance into the comb that would change the color of the honey from clear to another color, gradually getting to be a deeper color. With this said, how is it possible that the bees produce honey, or sugar syrup for that matter, with no color? What is the difference between the 3 substances (Clear sugar syrup versus 2009 Queen Cleo's yellow honey versus 2010 Queen Cleo's brown honey)?
In total the half size super on Queen Cleo produced a total of 8 liters of honey, minimum. This includes what was actually collected in the extraction vat, the pools of honey collected in the bottom of the decapped comb bowl, as well as any extra comb collected. All sources of honey were kept separate from one another.
A good system of converting the honey produced from volume to weight is required as honey is sold by weight, not volume. Also, anyone with a large supply of cheap high quality cheesecloth please contact me.
My sting. Once we got home that night I got stung. A fluke. A complete fluke. But a good lesson. The sensation of guilt when a bee dies has long past. There are 50,000 ladies in there and you can't feel guilty when a couple die now and then. Naturally, a bunch of bees follow the comb, get trapped in a honey pool and drown or get stuck and make the journey with the comb back to the house where the honey is separated from the guck. Inside one metal bowl was a second smaller bowl that was holding all the comb. This was comb from Hive #3 and did contain what looked like dead bees. Reaching my left hand down into the first bowl to attempt to pry the second bowl free was a sticky job. As I pushed my sticky hand in between bowls the back of my hand brushed up against the comb. On my third try to pry the smaller bowl loose the back of my hand, specifically right between my middle finger and ring finger brushed up against a bee stinger. It was dead wasn't it? The pain from the sting was immediate and considering the location on my hand I knew right away was going to get ugly. The bee was still alive!! Even if only barely alive, alive enough to give me my worst sting yet. After hours and hours the lady managed to stay alive and build up one last once of strength to jab me with her stinger deep enough that by morning, 12 hours later or so, my entire hand, almost halfway to my elbow was completely swollen without any hint of regression. Making a fist was no longer possible and it was itchy all over the hand and not just near the sting. An extra-strength Benadryl knocked me and the swollen hand out however. I now have liquid Benadryl in my bee tool box in case of a sting in the future. It was a good lesson to learn.
Tu ta loo,
J
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