It's been so hot these past weeks...record-setting days of over 100 degrees with "feels like" temps at almost 110 degrees. We were up at sunrise (to beat the heat and humidity) and ready to select a few frames of honey to extract for our personal use and to share with friends and family. We were in and out of the bee yard in no time.
We took only 9 frames and left plenty of honey for each of the three colonies. After closing up the hives, we placed "chicken feeders" aka "water troughs" full of sugar water on top of each.
After cooling down a bit, we prepared the extractor and got to work. While we have a great extractor, we didn't have our hot knife to uncap the honey and that was a bummer. Instead we scraped the caps open using a simple fork. This made the process a little messier, but still work out just fine.
Our extractor holds 9 frames total. We had it on full speed for approximately 15 minutes, then shut it off to flip the frames 180 degrees.
Another 15 minutes and the extraction was complete. Wax pieces were screened out and the honey settled in a bucket.
These 9 frames gave us 52 bottles of honey, 8 ounces each. Not too bad!
The bee's honey is perfectly delicious! We'll continue to feed the bees sugar water for as long as they are willing to take it.
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