The Art of Honey Collecting

   Hi everyone. I hope you've  having a nice weekend.  

   I'll also be joining Nicole for Sunday in the Art Room  and Gillena's for Sunday Smiles 

   The past week I had the first time experience of collecting honey from one of my bee hives.* I call it an experience because I learned a lot, and the biggest thing I learned was that I didn't really know much about collecting it. 😉 Grin.

   (*For those of you who haven't been reading my blog for awhile: I have 2 hives. The one that I started this year is keeping all its honey because basically this hive had to start from scratch this past May. The hive I'm collecting honey from is the one that is now just under 1 1/2 years old.)

   First I needed to get the honey super with the honey in it off of the hive. Our winters here in New Hampshire are too cold to leave  the third box on for the bees to enjoy the honey, even though they would probably love to have that honey to eat.  Because of the cold you really can't have more than 2 boxes on the hive during the winter. Bees need to be able to heat the inner hive by wiggling their bodies even on the coldest days, and the more space (3 boxes instead of 2), the more heat they need to make to keep the whole hive warm. 

   I'm also a little late getting the honey super off mainly because of my shoulder issue.  You can see the honey super in the photo below. Before I lifted the box, I took out the 2 empty frames on the bottom. I think this box weighed somewhere between 40-50 pounds (18- 23 kg), and being short with a rotator cuff issue meant I basically lifted and then let gravity help me bring it down onto the ground. The box was heavy, and I didn't want to injure my shoulder any more either.

     You might also remember that I left out a couple of frames last spring because the bees had already started to build honeycomb upward  when I went to put the super on. Isn't that a cool pattern they made? You can actually see the honey there too.

    It ended up not being a honey collecting issue though as you'll read further on in this post.

   And you can also see the honey on this one side of this frame. All the frames I left in the have  honey like this on both sides.

   There was no way I could carry this box very far, so I put the honey frames into a couple of garbage bags and then brought those  bags into my basement. It's cold enough in my basement and obviously not full of sugar loving insects so it was a good place to store the frames for a few days.

    I finally got my honey spinner  assembled so then I was ready to spin out the honey. (And please ignore the mess on the shelves of my laundry area. Eeek. Another day I did get them cleaned out now that I have some new basement shelves, but that was after my honey collecting adventure.)

    

    I now learned the most about collecting honey.  The biggest thing, and the most important when spinning it, is that you want the honey to be warm. OK, so I messed that one up having kept the honey frames in my nice cool basement. But I couldn't put them outside either, which I'll explain in the next paragraph. 

   The other thing I learned is that it would have been nice to do this in an area where I could have put a table. That is because you need to slice off the beeswax that is over the honey, so when you spin it the honey can come out.  I could have put a table outside, and I could have spun it outside, but then the smell would have attracted all kinds of 6 legged and potentially hungry visitors. 😩 This year spinning would be in the basement. With cold honey.  😰🍯

   Or I should say this year spinning would  collect hardly any of the cold honey. The honey was too viscous to come off the frames. It ended up being better to slice off the comb and  then put those slices into some large plastic food storage containers. Then, to warm up the honey, I put those food storage containers  on my kitchen counter near the sunny window. The warmth made the honey drip out of the comb. 

   I have 3 containers like this one. And it's a slow process. This could take up to 2 or 3 weeks for all the honey to drip out. Part of the slowness is that honey only  drips when it's warm, and at this time of year, other than for part of the day when my kitchen counter gets the light from the window, it isn't exactly hot. That's OK though since it's not like I must have the honey right this second. Besides, I'm also leaving later this week for an 11 day road trip, so I wouldn't even be home for it anyhow.

  I also have a few ideas  for keeping the honey warm too, but since I have yet to try them, I'll keep my ideas for another post.

   After that dripping finishes, I'll need to filter the honey before it is ready to use.  If I could have spun it out, I could have filtered it quicker and it probably would have needed less filtering.  I should also add, I did get some honey in the spinner, but that may end up being just a few spoonfuls.🥄

   This process left me with some still sticky hive frames. I could have washed them with soap and water right away, but I decided to give the residual honey back to the various bees. I took the frames and put them outside, leaning them up against a garden wall.

  And you can see the honey bees  and others really enjoyed the treat. ❤

  I'll have more of this adventure to share with you once the honey has dripped and I go to filter it.

  Have a super rest of your weekend and start to the new week also.