The Joys of Beekeeping

By Pat McGinty 

It’s extracting time!!!!!  For beekeepers that were fortunate enough to have plenty of nectar-laden flowers in the vicinity, the extraction process has been going on for a couple of weeks and will continue into early September depending on when the beekeeper can get the job done. What is extraction, you ask? Extraction is the process by which all that honey the bees have been storing up in the supers (you remember, the boxes above the brood boxes) becomes fair game for the beekeepers despite how the bees may feel about it. And the bees don’t give it up easily.

As you may remember from last month, the supers are added to the hive sometime around June. Once the bees have filled (or nearly filled) the second brood box with honey for their winter storage they will start looking for other places to put it, so the beekeeper adds the supers. The bees, figuring they will be sitting pretty with all these food stores, obligingly start filling the super frames with honey. If these are new frames they will first have to be drawn out (wax cells built to hold the honey) which will slow down the process so it is always a good idea to use previously drawn out frames if you have them. This year I used a mixture of both but without much nectar flow (see last month’s column) it didn’t really make any difference in the amount of honey being stored in my hives (yes, I am whining.)  However, the little girls are so organized they had teams working on both types of frames even if they wouldn’t be needed.  

The months of June, July, and August are the time when the colony is busy storing a lot of food. In April and May, the queen has been laying eggs at an incredible rate (2,000 per day minimum) and those new bees, for the most part, are now the food gathering team (give or take some turnover since bees only live about three to six weeks depending on the workload.) I am talking thousands of bees travelling thousands of miles and gathering nectar from tens of thousands of flowers. No easy task! The bees have brought the nectar back to the colony, passed it on to the workers in the hive who then store it in the wax cells and fan it until the moisture level is about 17 percent water. When they are satisfied it has reached this point they put a wax seal over it to keep it that way. Then comes mid-August (sometimes sooner) and the beekeeper arrives to collect the capped frames of honey from the super. This is where it can get interesting.  

This is probably not the time a beekeeper wants to go hive harvesting without a good bee suit, because the bees do not give up their hard work willingly. Every beekeeper has his/her own way to harvest honey; I use a large plastic storage box with a lid.  As I remove each frame from the super I brush off the bees (no, they are NOT happy about it) and as quickly as possible place the bee-less frame into the box, moving the cover as little as possible.  Other beekeepers have empty super boxes and, after brushing off bees, put the frames in the empty super and cover it so the bees can’t get back on the frames. Still other beekeepers go out a day or two early and replace the inner cover of the hive with a cover that lets the bees get into the brood boxes but not back up into the supers. Then they put another cover on top of the supers that has the most awful smelly stuff imaginable on it (a skunk would run away) which causes the bees to empty the frames out pronto. After a day or two they go back to the hive and just walk away with the filled supers. Now the frames are ready for extraction.

Some beekeepers do their own extraction and others use extraction services because the cost of an extractor isn’t cheap. The extraction services are often done by commercial beekeepers who have the beekeeper bring the capped frames to the extraction site and come back to pick them up a couple of days later. There may be a dollar cost for the service and most services keep the wax caps that are removed so the honey can flow freely in the extractor. I, for one, prefer to do my own and it is a hoot. Not to mention my kitchen is never the same afterwards. This is my experience.

I borrowed my bee-buddy, Steve’s, extractor. It is a manual extractor that holds four frames.  I also borrowed his electric de-capping knife. I had already been on YouTube and made my own de-capping tank (this catches the caps and any residual honey.) I had my grandson, Gregory, to help and I am glad I did. First we moved the kitchen table out of the way and put a large tarp on the floor (this does not help the cabinets, refrigerator, or stove, however.)  The extractor was set up near the kitchen sink and the de-capping tank next to the stove, because it was closest to the electrical outlet. I had about five supers of frames to extract.  Gregory would take a frame, slice the caps off of both sides, and hand the frames to me.  I would use a “scratcher” to open any caps the knife missed and load the frame into the extractor. When the extractor was loaded I started the spin by using the handle on the top.  I would spin three minutes one direction and then spin three minutes in the opposite direction. Then I would check the frames and if they were mostly empty I would turn them over and do the same process for the reverse side of the frame. The extractor, by the way, only holds about a gallon and a half of honey so at the same time you are extracting, honey is flowing out a valve at the bottom of the extraction tank, through a filter, and into a bucket. Five hours later we were finished (I was physically finished a lot sooner, but that is what grandsons are for.) My kitchen was the sweetest smelling (and stickiest) place on Earth and I had about eight gallons of honey and more draining into the bottom of my de-capping tank. It was heavenly; then the cleanup started. 

The extraction tank and the frames were the easiest to clean because you never get all the honey out of either.  So out to the bee yard I went with the extractor and 40 mostly empty super frames and spread them out near the hives. Two days later the bees had cleaned them up spic and span and everything was ready to put away. The kitchen was another story. A bucket of warm water with vinegar, and two hours later 98 percent of the stickiness was gone. I fully understand why beekeepers doing their own extraction have special rooms or sheds to do it in.  

So the good news is the 2015 honey is available; the bad news is the cost has gone up due to the lack of nectar flow and thus less honey. The latest reports are showing the wholesale price at $7 per pint so expect to see at least $10 per pint from your local beekeeper or outlet if not more since the finally tally is not yet in. 

For those of you that want to know more about beekeeping don’t forget the Backyard Beekeepers Association has a monthly meeting you are welcome to attend. The September meeting is a Field Day to be held Saturday, Sept. 12. We will be visiting a commercial bee yard as well as a hobbyist bee yard to learn about the differences in beekeeping styles, what to look for in a healthy hive, and what kind of hives are being used in the area. We will meet at Beemaniacs, located at 7619 W. Woolard Road in Deer Park, at 10 a.m. We will be around bees so it is recommended to dress accordingly; if you are a beekeeper bring your bee suit and, if not a beekeeper, wear clothing that covers you well including some kind of hood for your head. No perfumes or sweet smelling scents unless you want a lot of bees crawling all over you looking for nectar. Backyard Beekeepers Association, Bob Arnold, and Beemaniacs take no responsibility for the unprepared. If you can’t make the Field Day our Oct. 15 meeting will be back at the Deer Park Library, and honey tasting is on the docket, among other interesting topics, including “Winter Preparation Peggy’s Way.” If you are in to social media you can find us on Facebook at backyardbeekeepersassociation.

Look forward to seeing you soon.