so... yesterday was weird...
despite my ongoing back pain, I went into the hive to confirm that the new queen was indeed laying. brood is still pretty spacey, but I saw a little bee hatching, lots of larvae, and thought "okay, that's enough for me" and was ready to call it a day, stacking all of the boxes back, with plenty of tooth-sucking and "oof!" and "gah!" sounds.
the bees were starting to comb on top of the frames in the top two boxes, so I was scraping that off, and getting a lot of nectar dripping off of it, so I thought what the heck, let's see how the whole honey thing is going...
well, the honey thing is GOING. in fact, at least half of the frames in the top box were over 80% capped, so without really knowing what the heck I was doing, I went ahead and started harvesting honey.
and yeah, I did everything wrong:
I pulled the honey right next to the hive
I did it all by myself, running up and down the fire escape stairs cursing and muttering and cry-laughing with excitement and confusion
I put the frames back wet
(listen... this was NOT supposed to be happening at the beginning of July!)
but at the end of the day, I had over 12 cups of honey, and I'm still draining a lot of it. I only harvested from maybe half of my frames, the rest of them (the newer ones I had checkerboarded in) weren't all completely capped. but it seemed to me like the girls needed more room for storage, so I did what I did, and here we are.
as usual, my thought is "jeez, I hope I didn't screw up too badly..."
but hey, there's this:
I put the honey and comb and all into a paint strainer (they're like $4 for two at the Lowe's down the street, so that's right in line with my humble budget), and hung it from a board over a 5-gallon bucket to drain. I'm going to plop it in the full sun today, hopefully that will warm it up and get it all flowing out of there. no extractors for this girl! we'll see what I can do with the wax, too... I'm pretty excited, I'm pretty overwhelmed, and mostly I'm just hoping I haven't done everything too terribly wrong.
but I don't know that I've ever found more satisfaction from work in my entire life. work that produces FOOD?? yeah, that's the best.
despite my ongoing back pain, I went into the hive to confirm that the new queen was indeed laying. brood is still pretty spacey, but I saw a little bee hatching, lots of larvae, and thought "okay, that's enough for me" and was ready to call it a day, stacking all of the boxes back, with plenty of tooth-sucking and "oof!" and "gah!" sounds.
the bees were starting to comb on top of the frames in the top two boxes, so I was scraping that off, and getting a lot of nectar dripping off of it, so I thought what the heck, let's see how the whole honey thing is going...
well, the honey thing is GOING. in fact, at least half of the frames in the top box were over 80% capped, so without really knowing what the heck I was doing, I went ahead and started harvesting honey.
and yeah, I did everything wrong:
I pulled the honey right next to the hive
I did it all by myself, running up and down the fire escape stairs cursing and muttering and cry-laughing with excitement and confusion
I put the frames back wet
(listen... this was NOT supposed to be happening at the beginning of July!)
but at the end of the day, I had over 12 cups of honey, and I'm still draining a lot of it. I only harvested from maybe half of my frames, the rest of them (the newer ones I had checkerboarded in) weren't all completely capped. but it seemed to me like the girls needed more room for storage, so I did what I did, and here we are.
as usual, my thought is "jeez, I hope I didn't screw up too badly..."
but hey, there's this:
I put the honey and comb and all into a paint strainer (they're like $4 for two at the Lowe's down the street, so that's right in line with my humble budget), and hung it from a board over a 5-gallon bucket to drain. I'm going to plop it in the full sun today, hopefully that will warm it up and get it all flowing out of there. no extractors for this girl! we'll see what I can do with the wax, too... I'm pretty excited, I'm pretty overwhelmed, and mostly I'm just hoping I haven't done everything too terribly wrong.
but I don't know that I've ever found more satisfaction from work in my entire life. work that produces FOOD?? yeah, that's the best.
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