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!

First Honey Harvest of 2009

Here is my daughter Valerie with the first jar of honey harvested in 2009!

Today I harvested for the first time in 2009. I had two excellent honey helpers, my daughter Valerie and my grandson Dylan. We first cut the capped honey off of the frame and let the pieces drop into the prepared pan.


Then Valerie and Dylan crushed the honey comb with their pestles.

My job was to take the honey-laden silicon mat and scrape as much honey as I could off of it and into the filter bucket.

Dylan helped with that as well. We then put the filter buckets out in the Hotlanta weather to encourage the honey to filter through. They each took home a jar of their honey harvest.


To see a more detailed view of crush and strain, visit my video on crush and strain honey harvest.