It was a nice day for extracting honey. The outside temp was about 83 degrees, but fairly pleasant in the barn with fans on. Warm enough for the honey to flow pretty well. We pulled 18 frames off hive #2, our strong hive. We weighed each frame, and had 86 pounds prior to extraction. There were some very nice looking frames and some not as perfect, but still held a lot of honey.
Extracted, we have 4 gallons drawn off and the wax cappings are still draining with what looks like at least one more gallon. With the weight of a gallon coming in just around 12 pounds, that would give us about 60 pounds extracted.
Here Kathy is putting the wax cappings into the filters. We put the filter pail out into the back of our truck, which has a topper. It's pretty warm in there and we'll draw that off in the morning and then I'll wash off the wax to save for processing later. The honey has great taste but is distinctly darker when compared with last year's honey, even the later from the fall which was darker than our early harvest last year. This honey must be from a whole blend of various sources. The bees right now are all over the clover, so I suspect we'll have a nice second harvest as well.
Wow! That's an awesome amount of honey for so early in the season. Bees around here usually aren't ready til August. That's wonderful that you were able to extract so much!! Sounds like you might be getting much more in a month or two.
ReplyDeleteI was surprised to see that much this early. We extracted a couple supers last summer July 31st, but that was an extremely early spring and this year we are quite delayed. However, I think they were able to gather nectar when there was an abundance of flowering plants, and so this is likely a real mix. Dark, very sweet. Do you get any honey from the hives you've moved elsewhere?
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