First honey, honey comb after extraction

[Don Klinger]

Hello Everyone,

I harvested my first honey ever this afternoon. The wife and I had a great time. I harvested maybe a week early, but I wanted to make sure the colonies had enough stores for the winter.
I started with three hives, one swarm and two packages all on foundation. I ended up with 5&1/2 gallons of honey. I thought that was pretty good.

Most of my frames were drawn and capped very shallow, only about 1/2 of the caps came off with a knive. The rest I uncapped with and uncapping fork. After extraction many of the ends of the cells were deformed. The ends looked very ragged, frayed, torn and somewhat out of shape. Is this normal? Will my bees fix this next year when I place them back on the hive.

Thanks,
Don Klinger

[Jeff McGuire]

Congratulations on your first honey. It makes all the work worthwhile. The same thing happened to me because the comb is still pretty new and deforms easily. Put the frames back on the hive to let bees clean them outand yes they will repair the damage next year.

[ October 01, 2006, 07:10 PM: Message edited by: Jeff McGuire ]