I'm Covered in Bees!!!

Right. So yesterday I went to give my Nefertiti hive food. They've made some serious progress filling out the frames of foundation I gave them a few weeks ago, and they might be ready for another super sometime in the next few weeks. But in the meantime I might as well feed them so their job is easier and they can spend more time building out foundation for me. I don't think I'll be harvesting any honey from them this summer - it's more important to me that they be at a good strength for winter so that next spring they can really get down to business. Anyway, I brought them out a jar of sugar water and set it up over their inner cover, inside an empty super. I put the outer cover on top and put a brick on top of that so that I'd remember that I was feeding that hive, (not that I'd forget, but it's a good habit to get into), and so that the empty super wouldn't get blown off the top of the hive if the wind picked up.

Then I checked on my Nefertari hive. I put a queen excluder underneath the honey super they'd created, above the new super of foundation that I gave them last week. You'll remember that I said I inserted the new super underneath the super of honey they'd created in the hopes that the queen would fill out brood in the new box so I wouldn't have to fiddle with their arrangement come fall to give them a place to cluster, since they can't cluster on honey. I put the queen excluder in to make certain Nefertari wouldn't start doing anything in the super that the bees had decided would be my first honey super. No queen in the honey super means no brood, which means no pollen and that equals clearer, easier to deal with honey come harvest time.

Once I'd done that I peeked at the center frame of the honey super. Bees build from the center out, so that frame ought to be the one most finished. And it was! It was completely capped! My very first completely capped, finished, gorgeous honey frame! I was beside myself. What to do? I should put it back and wait for them to finish the rest of the super. But. But. My first honey frame! So I took it and ran. *laughing* I totally did. I grabbed that frame, I shook all the bees off of it, I threw the top back on the hive, and I ran for it with my stolen goods.

And, just like Eddie Izzard predicted, I found myself thinking "What the F*** am I doing?! I'm covered in bees!" Hah!

I got back up to the house, and I howled for Stephen and Cameron to come grab the frame for me. I built out a new frame with new foundation really quickly and ran back down to the hive to give it to them so they wouldn't fill in that empty space with burr comb. The bees were pretty fired up about me stealing that frame of honey, and had bearded all up and down the front of the hive. Buzz buzz "why did you steal our honey we thought you were cool and you're totally not, we feel so used?!" buzz buzz. I apologized politely, closed them up, and ran back up to the house to figure out what I was going to do with the honey frame.

We don't have an extractor yet. At first I thought maybe I could cut the cappings off and let the honey drain out onto a cookie sheet or similar - but the capillary wicking action of the hexagonal shaped comb is pretty strong and the honey just wasn't draining out. So we hopped online and did a little research - finally we decided the only way we were going to get the honey out was to totally destroy the comb and squeeze it out.

So that's what we did. In my kitchen sink. Luckily I had a bunch of different kinds of strainers and some cheesecloth lying around, (ironic since there have been many times when I've reorganized my pantry, stared at the cheesecloth, and thought - "why the hell did I buy that?").

First I cut off all the cappings on the frame with a knife using a gentle sawing motion from top to bottom keeping the top and bottom of the knife pressed against the top and bottom board of the frame. There were some low points on the frame that the knife couldn't reach - I used a capping fork or scratcher to get at them and open up the cappings. Then I gathered the cappings up into a triple folded piece of cheesecloth and squeezed.

I've never been so sticky in my entire life. I also saved a bit of the capping wax and honey out, and gave it to the boys - they were at first confused by it, and then totally on board. They didn't even get any in their fur! Nom nom nom.

After I'd dealt with the cappings I put them aside and we stared at the frame for a while. Then I used the cappings fork to scoop the wax and honey out into the strainer. I wasn't as careful as I could have been, and I ended up breaking a big portion of the frame. We'll give it back to the girls and see if they can repair it. Sorry ladies! In retrospect it'd probably be better to use a big spoon.

Underneath the strainer was a pan to catch the drip - we ended up straining the honey again after this because some tiny pieces of wax had gotten through.

From one single honey frame we got a quart of filtered honey. A quart. Holy cow. And it's delicious! Very light in color and it tastes like clover. It's settling right now - tomorrow I'll skim the foam and air bubbles off the top and then we can bottle our very first honey. Whoo!