Crush and Strain Harvest When You Use Foundation

The bees where we poured the nematodes a week ago had honey to harvest. But the frames in the hive were put there by the previous owner and the frames all had plastic foundation. I haven't ever harvested from plastic before, but there's a first time for everything.

I harvested from them in mid-July and just haven't posted about it until now.

We took about two boxes worth of honey off of the two hives. We actually removed two boxes from each hive, but many of the frames were not used so we only harvested the excess, amounting to two boxes. I wanted to leave each hive with one full super in addition to whatever they have stored in the bottom brood box so that they have a good chance going into winter.

I brought the honey home and used a spatula to scrape the honey off of the plastic and into my crushing pan. This was the messiest harvest ever. And the frames were really drippy. I put the dripping frames into another roasting pan and will use the honey that dripped off of them to feed any bees who need feeding going into winter.

You can see in the first frame that it was only partially filled with capped honey.

I used a spatula to scrape the honey into the crushing pan.

The fuller frames were more fun!

When I had crushed it all and put the pulverized wax into the filter buckets, I then let the bees clean it up. I always do this in my front yard so it's not right next to the beehives.

Out in front of my house puts the house between the cleanup and the apiary. Mostly I am sure I am feeding bees from around the neighborhood (there are at least five beekeepers within a block of me).

It is quite a party for the bees but at the end of the day the wax is clean, not at all sticky, and ready to put in the solar wax melter.

Tom Webster, Heat and Nosema

I heard Tom Webster speak on Wednesday night at the local bee club meeting. Dr. Webster is at Kentucky State University and focuses his research on nosema.

He had slides to show how nosema lives as a parasite in the bee's gut. The spore of nosema sends out a tube which finds purchase in the wall of the bee gut lining and embeds itself. Nosema really messes up the bee's digestion then and eventually, if nosema gets the best of her, she dies from lack of nutrition since her digestive system is compromised.

I had a hive which is one of my survivor hives who appeared to have nosema over the winter. When the bees went on cleansing flights, the hive was covered with brown streaks of bee feces. I was sure they would die since I was not treating with anything. But when spring came, the hive has survived and is making honey like crazy as we speak.

Dr. Webster said that without lab proof, there's not a sure diagnosis and sometimes bees get diarrhea for other reasons, but also the presence of diarrhea/nosema does not always mean the hive will die.

Essentially he said the best way to address nosema is to get rid of old wax. He didn't say keep old comb for five years like UGA is now saying. He said GET RID OF OLD WAX.

I raised my hand and said that I have been cutting out the old wax and then dipping the frames in boiling water for 1 minute. When the frame is pulled out of the stewpot, the thin layer of melted wax on the top of the water coats the frame as it comes out. I wanted to know if that wax would still contain microbes for nosema.

Interestingly Dr. Webster said that heat will kill microbes so the boiling water should do them in, while freezing frames would just suspend the microbe. Once removed from the freezer and returned to room temperature, the nosema microbe would be alive and happy.

Since we often recommend freezing cut comb and chunk honey to kill wax moth eggs which might be in the wax, I found that really interesting.

Cold will kill eggs of bugs but will not kill microbes.

Heat kills.

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Note: Feedback I got from a reader makes me want to write a little clarification as an addendum to this post:

When you make cut comb honey or chunk honey, you always freeze it so that your friend/customer doesn't open the jar or box to find wax moth larvae floating in their honey. Freezing the product kills the insect eggs. Obviously you can't heat either of these products or all the wax would be melted.

However, when you are cleaning frames, boiling water kills everything in the wax: wax moths, eggs of whatever might have been in the comb (roaches, wax moths, SHB), and microbes for nosema.

Feeding Frenzy Two

Today I finished cleaning up from our first harvest.  I put out the wax - still sticky with honey in a pan and in two filters.  Here's the amazing progression over the course of a short time as the bee foraging scouts got the word out:

11:23 AM

11:50 AM

11:51AM

12:14 PM

I didn't go back down until 4:30 and it's all over now but the shouting.  Here's what it looks like now:

Amazing, what quick work they made of cleaning up the comb.  There are still bees in the filter with the dark comb in it.  It's stacked pretty deep because it is the wax from one 8 frame super.  So the bees burrow down to get the drips of honey.  

We have NO nectar at all right now, so they were thrilled for this opportunity.  I'm sure bees came from all around.  I could see their flight paths as they flew from the back to the front of my house, so clearly they were not in any way all from my hives.

Feeding Frenzy

After the harvest, I always put the dripping frames from crush and strain back onto the hives for the bees to clean them up.  So last week when we harvested, I did that - put the frames back onto the hives.  Probably this week I should take those boxes off of the hive because the bees will not draw any more wax this year.

Left in the filter buckets is the comb from the crushing and it always has some honey left on it.  In past years I've washed that comb and then put it in the solar wax melter.  For the past two years I have been putting the crushed comb out for the bees to clean up.  I put it far away enough from the hives to keep robbing from happening but close enough for them to find it (hopefully my bees find it and not bees of my neighbors).

Here's what it looked like at 7:24 this evening in the pan that I left out for the bees to clean:

They are upside down in the pan and having a field day cleaning up the comb from the harvest!