I actually have to read up on that. I've kind of skimmed my beekeeping books about honey harvesting, so I have some idea, but it seemed like a really remote event when I was reading so I didn't retain a whole lot of the info. But my hive seems so robust and is expanding nicely (and my sense of how much time is passing seems to be kind of ferwonky), I'll need to be up on harvesting before I know it.
From what I understand, the queen excluder keeps the queen in the main hive body and not up in the super, so those frames will be filled with just honey and no brood. When it's time to harvest, there are two options. You can cut the comb out of the frames and have honey-in-the-comb (waxy!), which sounds pretty simple but I'm not sure how you prepare the frames for the bees to build on again. Or you can cut the caps off the combs and spin the frames in an extractor, using centrifugal force to separate the honey from the comb. Sacramento Beekeeping supplies has extractors for rent, so that wouldn't be too hard, either. And then you have beeswax available for candles or soap or whatever. I'm planning erring on the side of leaving the bees too much honey rather than too little, but I'm not sure if that means harvesting early and letting them build up more reserves or just not taking all the frames or what.
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Date: 2011-06-22 10:35 pm (UTC)From what I understand, the queen excluder keeps the queen in the main hive body and not up in the super, so those frames will be filled with just honey and no brood. When it's time to harvest, there are two options. You can cut the comb out of the frames and have honey-in-the-comb (waxy!), which sounds pretty simple but I'm not sure how you prepare the frames for the bees to build on again. Or you can cut the caps off the combs and spin the frames in an extractor, using centrifugal force to separate the honey from the comb. Sacramento Beekeeping supplies has extractors for rent, so that wouldn't be too hard, either. And then you have beeswax available for candles or soap or whatever. I'm planning erring on the side of leaving the bees too much honey rather than too little, but I'm not sure if that means harvesting early and letting them build up more reserves or just not taking all the frames or what.