
harvestingjune2000
Midnite Bee-Beekeeper's: HARVESTING HONEY
ARTICLES
HARVESTING HONEY
No longer
do we harvest honey like "Daddy did" years ago. We have
learned new techniques (hopefully), new methods have been developed,
bees make MORE honey QUICKER in LESS time than days gone by, because we MANAGE
our bees BETTER than Daddy did. Back in World War II days, one colony might
produce two or maybe three supers of honey in the 5 month period of May through
September in Montgomery County. Now, it is fairly easy to produce three, four,
or even five supers of honey and harvest it by July 4th; and if you can't, you
are doing something wrong, but "that" is another story.
If your bees swarmed
after the nectar flow started about May 1st, you did !got have enough supers
on the colony soon enough, because bees just don't swarm during a good nectar
flow if they have adequate super space. Assuming that you have some supers of
nectar and honey on the colony, unless we have an most unusual year, the nectar
flow is almost finished by June 1 st, and surely finished by June 15th-20th.
GOOD MANAGEMENT TECHNIQUE means for you to consolidate the frames in the supers,
moving fully capped ones to the outside of the supers, filled but not fully
capped frames moved to the center, and empty frames or partly filled frames
REMOVED from the colonies so
you have reduced the available space left for bees to store the ending nectar
flow and maybe even force them to store some in the BROOD CHAMBER By doing
this, you will have all frames full and completely capped ready for harvesting
by July 4th.
Many ask me, "George,
why do you want to harvest by July 4th, it is so early? Why not wait until September
or October after
the goldenrod flow and its cooler?" 90% of all the honey made in central
Maryland is ready for harvest by July 4th. If we do indeed get a goldenrod flow,
that honey crystallizes quickly and I don't like it as a saleable honey, so
I leave it for winter stores for the bees. Further, maybe "cooler" is nice for
humans, but more bees are "at home" rather than out foraging, removing frames
of honey free of bees is much more difficult, the pretty white comb cappings
are all yellow from being walked on, the bees have broken some cappings and
moved the honey below into the brood chamber in anticipation of winter,
and you could not use Menthol to kill the tracheal mite in August when it
should be done, the extraction of just warm honey is difficult, and you
have no honey to enter in the Fairs and win prises. Maybe it has never occurred
to you that EAS is always in August, and the central Maryland County Fairs are
in August and September, because most beekeeping is OVER by July 4th.
Plan your HARVESTING
when the foraging
bees are OUT foraging the sun is out bright, and you don't have to use any
smoke or very little.
(Smoke makes bees
to break into cell
cappings and causes leaking honey.] Brushing bees off of frames of honey with
a bee brush is pretty
obsolete in today's times. [ Your car is fuel injected and no longer
has a carburetor, you probably have a micro-wave oven at home that is used more
than the big stove oven, and you probably have a computer in these CHANGING
TIMES.] Although bee-blowers are best and fastest for honey harvesting, they
are expensive ($300) and generally only used by commercial beekeepers. In today's
times, the use of a fume board (pad) and a "smelly chemical" is far and away
the easiest, fastest, safest, no sting way to harvest honey. Brushy Mountain
Bee Supply has a Fume board and pad for $7.75, and a pint of STINKING Bee-Go
for $9.25. Select a day with bright sun and a time when the forager bees are
OUT foraging, put a few drops of Bee-Go, Honey-Robber, or my favorite Benzaldehyde
on the fume board pad, place it on the top super, and WAIT 3-5 minutes. Remove
the super, NOW EMPTY OF BEES, and repeat the process on the next super. Only
Mann Lake, Ltd. sells Benzaldehyde, which does NOT STINK, but has the beautiful
odor of Oil of Almonds. Unless they have changed, Better Bee, Brushy Mountain,
Dadant, or Kelly sells the sweet smelling Benzaldehyde because the price of
a permit to sell each of these chemicals is so high and hence, they all sell
the one chemical best known: Bee-Go, which is the trade name for the chemical:
butyric anhydride which has the odor of skunk musk and vomit. UGH!
Lets talk about
your extraction: Some beginners have mistakenly done this JUST ONE TIME outside
so they did not mess up the kitchen with honey; but when the robber bees chased
them inside, the neighbors called the police and Dad got badly stung bringing
the supers and frames inside, the lesson was well learned. The temperature of
honey to be extracted is very important, because warm honey of 90° extracts
VERY EASILY, but room temperature honey at 70° is difficult to extract and
can result in broken combs and not fully extracted frames. Hence have an EXTRACTION
DAY party. Stack you filled supers outside, SEALED SO NO BEES CAN GET INSIDE,
and let them heat up under a bright sun for 1-2 days, and bring inside just
one super at a time for extraction. HONEY IS VERY HYGROSCOPIC [Sucks up moisture
out of the air.], so you must keep all containers of honey covered with a lid
as much as possible. After the honey is extracted, strain it through a fine
sieve to get the "nuts and bolts" out [bee legs, wax, wood chips, etc.];
and then, while still
warm, filter the honey through some nylon or rayon material that is fine
or shear like a woman's slip material or woman's panty hose. I use several layers
of bridal lace material called marquisette. In the "old days", cheesecloth was
used because it was cheap and nylon was expensive, but cheesecloth is made of
cotton which leaves tiny fibers in the honey that encourages crystallization.
USE ONLY a man-made fiber like NYLON or RAYON. After filtering is completed,
cover the honey to curtail hygroscopic action and let the honey sit and settle
for at least 3 days, skim off the foam on the surface of the honey, and start
filling containers with your honey.
To keep your wife
happy, grab a pan of clean water, a wash cloth, and a dry towel and go and clean
off the honey on all the door knobs, light switches, toilet handles,drawer
handles in your house, because a drop or two of honey on your hands can
go
a long way and-is not only sticky, but attracts ants or flies. That is
why I converted my horse barn into my honey house, saving my marriage of 56
years.
I hope you are
aware that Dr. Dyce of Cornell University in his study of making honey spread
(creamed honey) found that the most ideal temperature to help honey crystallize
is 57°. Hence, never try and store your honey in your cool basement or out
in your garage. Store honey in the FREEZER or out in the warm sunlight, one
or the other, but not in some cool place. I store 20 supers of comb honey in
a freezer for a year or more for sales at shows and many cases of creamed honey
are in another freezer; and the honey is always as fresh as the day I took it
from the bees. Some say they don't have a big freezer, and my answer is there
is a frozen food locker in most towns that rent space by the week, month, or
year. However, the best place to keep a 60 pound bucket of honey is out in the
sun or at least behind a sunny window. Or did you forget that a queenbee will
not lay eggs unless the brood temperature is 91 °-96°, so our warmest
Washington, DC temperature is never going to hurt honey, plus it will stop it,
from crystallizing.
Have fun and don't
get sick from too much honey tasting while you are extracting.
Did You FORGET Paying
Your Dues?
Surely, some people
forgot, because there are a lot RED marks on my NOT PAID list. Our yearly dues
are $10, due in MAY, and you get 1 1 monthly meetings, the ownership and opportunity
to work with our 4 colonies at Brookside Nature Center upon asking me, and 12
of George's PINK PAGES. Further, most associations don't have a single Master
Beekeeper member, whereas we have NINE, any of which can help you. $10 seems
pretty cheap for all of that, less that $1 per month. The PINK PAGES are a
FREE extra, but
any amount of money you send will materially help paying for their printing
and mailing.
I am OLD, a scientist,
a beeKEEPER, and generous with my time and knowledge, but I am not a
bookkeeper plus
I don't like keeping "tabs" on people. Hence, please mail me your yearly dues!
If I have put a RED CIRCLE around the date like "00/5" on the Honey Pot mailing
label, that RED should be your reminder to mail me your check quickly.
Note that I have
not mentioned EAS 2000. I will just count on seeing all of you in Salisbury
LEARNING all about the real JOYS OF BEEKEEPING.
New Queens?
Some colonies have
swarmed, and left you with a new queen in the parent colony. Maybe you have
been summoned to catch a swarm, and you have a new colony with an unknown queen.
Unless you have a MARKED queen, how do you know that the queen that you saw
yesterday is the same queen that was there in April? Are you sure that your
bees are Italian? or Carniolan? or Buckfast? or just "Uncle Billy's"?
Maybe I should
ask you: DO YOU REALLY CARE?
It is almost universally
agreed that the genetic makeup of the queen basically sets the tone of the colony;
which includes such things as gentleness, honey productivity, disease resistance,
wintering ability, comb production, swarming tendency, food consumption, population
buildup and other traits. Unless you are an absolute beginner, surely you know
that the Africanized bee as well as the old, dark Mellifera Mellifera bee brought
here in the 17th "and 18th centuries from Europe was nasty, disease prone and
not a great honey producer. Scientific research and skilled queen breeding by
many dedicated people have now made it possible for each of us to have backyard
bees that suit our desires rather than just letting nature decide.
You MUST understand
that bees are not particular about a queen, but just want "any" queen to be
the head of their colony. Hence if you are satisfied with this sort of colony
leadership, you are admitting that any queen irrespective of her genetic characteristics
is good enough to head up your honey bee colony.
You are NOT in charge of your bees - THEY are in charge of you!
By now you know
(or should know) that the commercial honey producers that own large numbers
of colonies, e. g. 5,000 or 10,000 colonies requeen each colony EVERY YEAR with
queens of the
genetic characteristics they desire that they purchase from a queen breeder.
Purchasing these queens is an expense to the honey producer, but that cost is
easily made up by increased honey production as well as saving the costs of
certain undesirable traits like swarming, high food consumption, or disease
treatment.
Don't you think
it is high time for you to consider IN CHARGE of your bees and being a KEEPER
of bees rather than just being a HAVER of bees? Read the many writings regarding
the good points and bad points about bee RACES and the STOCKS of these races,
take a position based on your own time and ability plus the location of your
bees to select those traits that you most desire, and then select a breeder
of the queen that
best fits all these hopes, and decide on a requeening program. Although I personally
prefer late August and early September requeening, most people prefer to requeen
in April. You now have time to think all of this over. GOOD LUCK!