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We harvested over two thousand pounds of honey in 2023!
We harvest in August; by this time, the last of the late summer nectar sources are winding down. The bees are now curing their honey and beginning to prepare for winter. This means they're bringing in pollen as a protein source, and also water. They're contracting the brood nest in order to nurture the smaller workforce needed in winter.
Harvest - Start to Finish
First we pull the honey boxes off the hives and store them in our barn. A hive may have from 1-5 honey boxes to harvest.
We leave plenty of honey for the bees to get through the winter.
Each box has 7-8 frames of capped honey. We use an uncapping knife to remove a thin layer of wax and open up all the cells.
We load 20 frames into the extractor, essentially a big centrifuge, and spin the frames to extract the honey.
After extracting, we move the honey to the heated bottling tank.
We collect and save all the beeswax from the uncapping stage, and we put the wax and the emtpied frames back outside so our neighborhood bees can harvest any remaining honey from them.
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