Sunday, February 19, 2012

February Honey

The bees did not make it through the winter and we had some nice days in early February so we cleaned out the hive and I harvested and bottled about 3 gallons of Honey.

here the hive is open and the bars on the left have been harvested. At this point we had not found the queen.

We found her. None of these bees are alive and the queen is in the middle.

Here is a visiting bee on capped honey to the left and brood cells to the right.

Here is capped honey off of the bars and ready to go inside. We left the bars out in the open and over the rest of the day and the next we had sunny weather and high 50’s for temperature, so the visiting bees cleaned everything up. Then I brought the bars inside the garage.

Here the honey has been placed into pieces and is in the top bucket which has holes in it. It is slowly dripping through the mesh filter and the top bucket with the holes and into the bottom 2 gallon bucket. This takes days, but I harvested about 3.5 gallons.