Getting ready for some wax

I finally got around to cleaning the left over capping from extracting the honey. I rinsed all the honey off and will use a double boiler to melt the wax and strain it through cheese cloth to get the impurities out. After that I will make a couple of beeswax candles. Good to have around during the hurricane season.

Getting some honey finally

Thursday afternoon we finally managed to get together and take some sweet bounty form the kids.  After carefully pulling the top off and deciding how much to take, we decided on four deep frames.

After bring the frames in the house after removing the many stubborn little creatures from hiding in the comb, we started to use the uncapping knife to remove the outer layer of wax to expose the honey hidden inside.

After uncapping the frames they went inside a hand crank honey extractor which flings the material on the side then it runs down  and collects at the bottom.

When the extractor was full, I then poured the honey through several layers of cheese cloth to remove the impurities. When the cloth gets full of wax and thick honey, I needed to squeeze the rest out by hand, boy what a sticky job.

After all the sticky extraction was done, the extractor was placed outside for the bees to clean up the mess that I had made. The bees took all the left over honey and returned it back the hive from where it came from. I lost a couple of hundred bees doing this so I do not think next time I will let them clean up.

Here is one of my little buddies saying "Hello".

Update

Sorry for the long delay with the update. The Pepper tree blossom is now over and this weekend, I will see if there is enough honey to keep the kids going during the winter. If there is an excess I hopefully will get to harvest maybe one or two jars to sample. I am picking up a two comb extractor for this job Sunday after I get off of work. I feel sorry for the one who has to clean up the mess.

I will hopefully post the results next week, until then have a great one.

Condo addition

Sorry for the late posting, a lot going on right now. I finally added the honey super to the condo that the children are living rent free in. I discovered several frames in the second box that were already filled with capped honey. I am waiting for the pepper trees to fully blossom so the kids can finally go back to work.

Feeding time

After carefully examining my hive, the beekeeper decided that there was not enough food inside to maintain new upcoming brood. His recommendation was to feed them from the top cover to keep the neighborhood bees and ants from taking over. I boiled 8 pounds of sugar to one gallon of water and let it cool. After punching some holes in the top of six mason jars, I proceeded to cut out the hole for the jar to fit inside. In a couple of days I’m going to add one frame of honey inside the top super for additional feeding.

Hurricane Irene

Well we were extremely lucky and Hurricane Irene stayed far enough off the coast of Florida, therefore no damage to property or bees. All I did was strap the hive and stand down with a ratchet strap so they did not fly like the house in the Wizard of Oz. The queen is finally starting to produce some brood in the upper box.

Lousy weather

Been trying to take a peek at the kids to see how they are doing but the weather here has been unfavorable in the afternoons when I have time. With the last look I discovered the upper hive was showing signs of comb build up with some honey already in some areas. Hopefully I can peek before the weather gets to bad today.