[John Scifres]

Yesterday we had our first major (for us) honey harvest. I started a hive last year and got it to survive the brutal winter. In May it swarmed and I caught the swarm. I also made a nuc with one of the swarm cells. So my one hive became three. In May I also added a package for my fourth. I was told not to expect much honey since I had a swarm but the great weather has surprised me with booming populations and 3 supers on each of the original and swarm hives. The nuc is now a deep and a medium and the package is 3 full mediums with a just added fourth.

I started doing foundationless for about half my frames this year since I was just learning and wanted to try a lot of stuff. I also decided that if I had honey to harvest, I would do crush and strain. Well yesterday was the day. I had done 4 frames a few weeks ago so kinda knew what to do on a small scale. 5 gallon buckets just made it a bunch quicker.

Here I am with my helper, a foreign exchange student chaperone from France. I am looking over the frames and deciding which ones could be harvested. Some were not full and a few were not capped so I left most of those. I did test some of the uncapped and found it to be around 18% so I took a lot of the frames with some uncapped cells. Many frames were simply perfect works of art from the bees.

I would shake the frames in front of the hive if there were a lot of bees and then brush the stragglers. All that went great.

We then added them to a tote and then cut out the comb.

 

[John Scifres]

Afterwards we would crush with our hands and then pour into a 5 gallon bucket system that I have seen in several places but I think Michael Bush first showed me on his webpage or maybe here on Beesource. It worked great and soon we were filling jars.

Lots of jars.

I ended up with 34 Quarts, 28 Pints, and various other contaienrs we had saved including OJ and gatorade bottles, a peanut butter jar and even a Crown Royal bottle I am taking to my brother and my camper in the woods Overall we got 175 pounds from the 2 hives.

There's not much mystery about what the ladies are using now to make the honey.

 

[John Scifres]

I tested the honey tonight and it's at 17.5%. It tastes great!

I started cleaning up the wax today. That's a whole 'nuther job.

 

[Southwings]

That's awesome! Thank you for taking the time to share this.

 

[beesohappy]

Makes my mouth water. :applause:

As for the wax... put it in a pan with some water and boil it for a short time and then pour the wax and water through a paper towel into a plastic container. Let it sit overnight and viola beautiful wax that in my mind is worth more than gold.

 

[Thomassen]

Wow! Looks great.

 

[Jackam]

Nice essay!

 

[doug reed]

Nice job. Congratsto the girls too!

 

[Stella]

Very nice tutorial! (Love the "field" shots)
Thanks...and congrats!

 

[SpringGreen]

I love it!

 

[estreya]

Gorgeous, and so beautifully captured by your camera. That shot with the flower bouquet and produce to the rear is sublime. Congratulations!

 

[No-sage]

Nice going John, glad you've had a successful season.

 

[John Scifres]

I got all my wax cleaned up last night and melted into a nice disk. I strained it. Man there is some crap in there! It could use some more filtering but I'll wait to do that until I figure out its final use. I'd guess I got 3 pounds or so.

Through some quick sales at work I've already paid for half my initial hive investment