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Basic Beekeeping -- The Honey Crop Taking off honey supers and processing honey One of the joys of keeping honey bees is the reward of having some of your own honey. It is not "store bought." A beekeeper must determine just how much honey he/she can remove from the hive and still leave enough for the bees to over winter. We have indicated earlier that at least 60 pounds of honey should be left on the hive. You can estimate this amount by checking the honey stores in the brood chamber. A deep frame full of honey will weigh approximately 6 pounds. The bees will need 10 of these. Two shallow frames will equal one deep frame. How to take the honey supers off the hive You will follow the same procedures you have used to examine a hive in the
past. One can remove honey supers and get the bees out in several
ways. Mentioned in bee b Another method involves using a liquid chemical to drive the bees from the honey super. It works much faster. One can either make or buy a fume board. This like a top cover placed over the honey super. The chemical is sprinkled on the cloth inside the fume board and then set on the bee hive. All you need to do is remove the hive cover, inner cover and position the fume board in place. One bee catalog describes this chemical as "pungent." It does have a distinct odor! The chemical forces the bees of of supers in 3 to 5 minutes if the fume board is working. If you leave it on too long, you can drive the bees right out of the hive. The chemicals that do this go by the trade names of "Honey Robber" and "Bee Go". Removing honey supers Most of the honey bees in the supers should be out when you take the super from the hive. If they are not, you can remove each frame and shake the bees left off or brush them off. Old time beekeepers used a hand full of grass to brush bees off the face of the comb. It is free and works just a good as a bee brush. It is necessary to protect the super from robbing honey bees. Take the super to a secure place (i.e. to your basement, kitchen, etc. where honey bees can not get to it). Bees are attracted to honey! In human terms, it would be like a paper bag of money you had just broke open on a busy street corner and your money was blowing down the street. People would swarm to gather it up. This is called "robbing". One other word of caution:: Honey is sticky. When supers are removed from a hive, comb is often broken and the honey that was in that comb begins to drip and leak. Putting the super in a plastic garbage bag will contain the honey to the inside of the bag and also prevent bees from getting to it. Processing the honey One of the early things you should be thinking about when you purchase your hive equipment is what are you going to do with the honey the bees gather. You can spend a lot of money on equipment to extract honey or you can decide that you want to wait to see if beekeeping works out before you invest much money in any kind of extracting equipment. As a beginner, you most likely are not expecting a great amount of honey from your hives of bees the first year. Maybe enough for your own table and as gifts to friend and neighbors. I am going to suggest two methods you can use that do not require extracting equipment. If you are interested in extracting honey, you can move on to Intermediate Beekeeping 201. Method #1 Plastic frames with plastic foundation You can get honey from plastic foundation after the bees have capped the cells of honey on it. If fact it is rather easy. All you need to do is scrape the honey from the foundation -- wax comb and honey all come off easily. The hive tool is great for doing this. The procedure is: 1) secure a fair sized container to hold the wax and honey; 2) get a filter cloth (Cheese cloth will work and so will paint strainer sacks sold by paint dealers); 3) select a place to work which is clean; 4) get the super and remove a frame to begin the process. The process is to take each frame and with the hive tool or paint scraper, place the tool at the edge of the frame end bar and press the tool into the wax. With a pushing motion, the wax and honey will curl right off the plastic mid rib and fall into the straining cloth which is draped over the container. The straining cloth will allow honey to pass through while keeping the wax inside the straining cloth. A great amount of honey will remain in the wax and this can be partly removed by squeezing the remaining particles until most of the honey is out. After you have most of the honey out, you can mix the remaining wax with water. This will clean up the wax and remove the honey that still remains in the wax. This water can then be used as feed for the bees. We will discuss processing your wax in just a little bit. Another advantage of this method, is: the frames can be used again in the super and put right back on the hive it came off. The bees will clean up the frames and you can reuse them again the following season. The filtered honey can then be bottled. Method #2 Cut comb honey or chunk honey Again the decision must be made early. In this case, you will need wooden frames and what is called thin super foundation for comb honey to put in the frames. The bees will draw out this foundation and cap the honey they store. This process will give you honey in the comb. This is a delightful way to use honey. We would suggest that you make or buy a pan a little larger than the frame you are going to use. The Walter T. Kelley Co., makes a comb slicing pan for under $20.00 that is a delight to work with. You will also need something to put the comb into -- sealed plastic bags work as do jars. Special containers are sold for cut honey. And you will need a knife to cut the comb out of the frame. You can cut the comb to almost any size that you choose. Generally, the special containers are sized so you can get four sections from one frame. You can put comb in a jar and pour the extra honey drippings into the jar around the comb. Processing wax Another product of the hive besides honey is wax. It is used in candle making and other things. There is a delightful book written by Elaine White titled "Super Formulas - How to make more than 360 useful products that contain honey and beeswax." If you are interested in making things from wax, you should seek out this book. It was still available from the Walter T. Kelley Co., at this writing. Before you go any further, I must caution you about working with wax. It is very flammable. We would suggest the following method:
If you are disappointed in the quantity of wax you have recovered, save it and add to it next year. Some characteristics of honey Pure honey will last a long time. It does darken with age however. The two characteristics of honey we would like to discuss are 1) Fermentation of honey and 2) granulation of honey. Fermentation of honey Honey is hydroscopic which means that honey will absorb moisture. If the moisture content of honey exceeds 18.6%, honey will tend to ferment. The fermentation yeast in the honey will turn the sugars of the honey into alcohol. This causes honey to have a sour taste. It is recommended that if honey is to be stored for any length of time, it should have a moisture content of around 17%. The honey yeast are not able to grow at cool temperatures. So if honey is stored at below 50 degrees F., the yeast will not grow and are not able to grow and cause fermentation. Fermented honey can be feed back to the bees but it is unfit for human consumption. Honey can be frozen and that is a good way to keep honey for long periods of time. The optimum temperature for honey fermentation is above 80 degrees F. Granulation of honey All honey granulates at some point. That is: it becomes a semi solid sugar like substance. Honey that has granulated can be returned to a liquid state by heating it. So it should not be considered a serious problem. Granulated honey in jars can be put into a water bath having a temperature of 95 to 120 degrees F. Honey is darkened each time it is subjected to heat. If honey is heated to over 160 degrees F. for any period of time quick damage can be done to the honey. The taste will be changed and the color will darken considerably. Commercial honey packers usually heat honey to 160 degrees and then rapidly cool it. This causes the death of the yeast and reduces crystallization for several years -- giving the product long shelf life on the grocery stores shelf.
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