Harvesting Honey

There is something mesmerizing about keeping bees.  We, or maybe I should say my husband, is among thousands of hobby beekeepers.  Beekeeping or apiculture is the practice of setting up  beehives to maintain viable bee colonies.  If you are a beekeeper or apiarist there are many products that bees bless you with including honey, beeswax, propolis, pollen and royal jelly.  Beekeeping makes you feel apart of the miracle of the honey bee.

Our fascination with bees began a few years ago.  My husband was first interested in using the top bar method and built top bar hives.  Our luck with this method was not what we anticipated so this last year we switched to the Langstroth hive. My first post is starting at the end with the harvest of honey but a lot of time and study goes into maintaining a health hive so that you have a harvest.  

Timing is Critical

Harvesting honey at the right time is the difference between a delicious product and a disappointing failure.  Time of harvest varies a little from region to region but generally begins when nectar flow ends.  Signs of this are wilting flowers and less activity around the entrance of the hive.  

The best way to determine if the time is right is to open the hive and look at the frames.  If 80% of the cells are capped they are ready to harvest.  It's important to wait until this point because bees will monitor and correct excess moisture in the honey prior to capping a cell with wax.  Honey is referred to as ripe when it has 18.6% moisture.  Harvest before this point means excess moisture in the honey could cause it to ferment in the jars.  Harvesting later than fall means that the honey may be eaten by the bees or crystalize in the comb due to cold.  (Beekeeping, Sweet Results)

The amount of honey you need to leave the bees will depend on the length of you winter season. In my area it is recommend that you leave 80 pounds of honey for the bees.  Honey is never removed from the bottom brood chambers.  

We invested in a  2 frame extractor to remove the honey.  Once the caps are removed the frames are placed in the extractor and spun forcing the honey out.  To uncap the frames use a warm knife or use a capping fork.  The wax from uncapping is saved.  We put it on a tray by the bees and they clean it up nicely for us. The process is a little sticky but smell is so amazing!  

Cutting the caps off the frame.

Beeswax from caps it will be left by the hive for the bees to clean up and then I use it in lotions.

Our honey extractor.  You can see the 2 frames spinning.

From the extractor we filter the honey through a honey filter to remove wax and debris.  My husband made his filter out of two buckets adding a spigot to the bottom bucks to pour the honey into jars.  Honey can be stored in plastic or glass jars.  I prefer jar with a squeeze top so you don't have to dip utensils into the honey.  It keeps it cleaner.

I loved our harvest this year.  So delicious and nutritious!  

"The only reason for being a bee that I know of is making honey....And the only reason for making honey is so as I can eat it."  The Complete Tales of Winnie-the-Pooh by A.A. Milne