It has been a strange year this year with a very early start and a lot of flow in June. The red poly hive (RPH) was busting at the seams with honey and had a weight recorded of 60 Kg. This to me is a sign that the hive need emptying so i decided to do a early harvest. The plan was to remove all the capped frames from RPH and BPH and return them to the hive, in the hope that teh extra space would be filled and i could get a boost on the harvest this year.
The frames were loaded onto the trailer behind the quad and brought down to the kitchen for processing. The full clean and expulsion of the cat was performed prior to the arrival of the frames.
9 frames in total were deemed ready for harvest and were loaded onto the drip trays. The flow system activated and the honey run out.
This year the honey was super viscus and really high quality. It still decided to drip out the bottom of the flow frames as per usual and validated the use of my drip tray method. All this would end up on the floor of the apiary if i did this in the hives.
There was a lot of honey left in the frames this year due to how thick it was. Some of the hexagons failed to open properly so it took a long time to drain out. I had to open and close the frames and tilt them up to get as much out as I could. This was not too big a deal as the frames were to be returned to the bees so this would give them a head start in refilling them for late summer harvest.
I have improved my set-up for next time. I will add tabs of wood on the outside of the white boxes so that they cannot fall into the tubs.
The drip trays are filled by gravity and then manually tipped up over the 200 / 400 micron sieve to remove any bee parts or wax lumps. The honey is then stored for at least 24 hours to allow the bubbles to float before being jarred.
And then the kitchen cleaned once again…
The frames were returned to the bees back into the bee hive from where they came and the scores totted up using the hive scales which show the difference in mass due to the harvest.
Red hive gave:12.76 kg
Blue hive gave: 9.27 kg
Totaling 22.03 kg. Not bad for a early harvest.. Not bad at all.
All the trays have been placed in the bee equipment storage shed so that they are out of the way, out of the rain and will be thoroughly cleaned by the bees over the next 2 days.
This year I plan to sell both 8 oz and 16 oz jars. This gives me a small and a large size.
Jars are here and Labels have been bought so should be here next week, and then we are good to go.