Wednesday, August 03, 2005

The pic is looking down onto a super full of frames full of honey. The wavy pattern is cute but as anyone in the know will know, somewhat undesirable: really the bees should be pulling the frames equally, and having a pattern like than means you can't shuffle the frames around.

Today I took off the 4 supers that I had clearer-boarded on... sunday? Hive 2 was a success: nearly clear. Hive 1 was less good and I had to flick bees around. Sorry girls. However the end product was a wheelbarrow full of honey...

My technique now is to offload into the wheelbarrow, wheel it up the garden, take the frames out onto a table in the garden room and then go off and have dinner and process in the evening. Miranda helped for the first few before going off to bed; Daniel helped for some more; then I was left alone. In the end I ran out of time and only processed 3 supers, I'll have to dump #4 back on the hives for the while. But the main point was to give them more room, which they will get. Perhaps I'll split the still-full frames half-half between the hives. yes, that sounds like a good idea.


Total honey production... not sure. I had to empty about 10 kg out into a bucket because the extractor (3 frame tangenital) filled up, so 30 kg at least, perhaps 40-50 if I've done well. Not sure. All nice and runny and probably mostly borage.

1 Comments:

Blogger William M. Connolley said...

Hmm yes. And not only are you a beekeeper but a weather nerd too!

As for the Varroa... I'm strictly an amateur beekeeper. I know I couldn't cope with what you need to do to make it work the "integerated management" way. Its a pity though.

2:32 PM  

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