And so it is… time to harvest the spring honey. Only three of my hives had supers on. The other four are made up of a split hive, a collected swarm, a supercedure queen and an artificial swarm!

And what did my girls produce? 90Ib’s… Oh Lord when I see all that honey in the settling tank - yes I do feel guilty. But, I will say to you as I said to one of my sons - who is a vegan - bees collect nectar and make honey. It’s what they do. They never get halfway through the year and think to themselves - “you know what girls? We have enough here to get us through the winter, let’s take the rest of the year off!” And, as a result of living in hives they can only store so much, so we give them the supers in which to store the excess nectar and what should I do with it? Throw it away? They cannot possibly eat everything they store! No bees are harmed at all when a good beekeeper removes the honey and a good beekeeper will always leave them with enough stores such as they wont go hungry!

When I took of this harvest, I left each hive with a super half full of stores to get them through the ‘June Gap’ AND each hive gets back it’s wax cappings to clean out and trust me there’s a lot of honey in there for them. When they’ve cleared up the wax cappings they then get back their supers which they start to fill up again… weather permitting!

Meanwhile, how do I remove the supers without harming and upsetting the honeybees?

If you look at the image above; imagine taking off the roof, crown board and supers that you are going to spin. Remember I left each hive with a half full super. Momentarily place them to one side then…

1. Take another crown board and on the underside of it secure a bee escape on it with drawing pins. I use a Rombus bee escape (see image on the right).

2. Put the crown board, with the bee escape on it, on top of the remaining super with the Rombus face down on the queen excluder.

3. Replace the supers you’re going to spin, crown board and roof.

4. Leave the hive like that for 24 hours

   It’s a one way street down, through to the brood box. By the time you go back there won’t be any bees in the super/s that are to be spun… well maybe a few stragglers but you can gently brush those off. Take the supers home and spin away.

So how do we spin the honey?

I use a four frame electric honey extractor. (See image below). You can use a manual one, but trust me, I started off with a manual one and changed it for an electric one the following year! Too much like hard work for me. Also mine is small, as in four frames only at a time; depending on how much money you have to spend you can get much bigger ones.

Once you have the supers at home you need to set yourself up somewhere where the bees won’t suss out what you are doing. I do it in the kitchen with all the doors and windows shut. When I say set yourself up you do need to be organised because it’s a very sticky affair. I put cardboard on the floor, underneath the extractor, underneath my feet where I’ll be working and underneath the supers which I put on the kitchen table. Rule no. 1. Before you leave the kitchen, take your shoes off because they will have wax and/or honey on the soles, as careful as you try to be it’s going to happen, and you don’t want to trapes that through your house!

I hold a frame in a large feeder tray and, with a very sharp knife, (some people use an uncapping fork), I remove the fine layer of wax cappings. I place each frame in to the electric spinner and press the button! I normally spin the frames for 1 or 2 minutes and then turn them around and do it again. I do this to make sure both sides of the frames have been spun. Each frame is returned to the super they came from. My hives are numbered and the supers have the corresponding numbers on them. I do this to make sure each hive has its own supers returned to them. Why? Just in case one of my hives has a disease. I don’t want it spreading to another hive. (As it happens mine don’t but you honestly cannot be too careful).

Once all the supers have been spun, I take them back to the apiary together with the wax cappings from each hive in the feeder trays.

I make sure the supers are wrapped up very well, as they still have the remains of the honey in them and I don’t want a bun fight to start in the barn with robber bees!

Before I give them back the supers I give each hive back the wax cappings that are in the feeder trays.

The feeder trays are marked with the same corresponding numbers as the hives and supers.

1. Go back to the image at the top of the page.

2. Remove the roof and crown board and take the bee escape off the crown board.

3. Put the crown board back on.

4. Put an empty super, (no frames in it), on top of the crown board.

5. Put a crown board on top of the empty super.

6. On top of that put another empty super, (no frames). ,

7. Place the feeder tray, with the wax cappings, inside the empty super making sure the hole in the feeder tray is over the hole in the crown board.

8. Put the lid on the feeder tray.

9. Replace the roof.

Now, because of the space left between the original super and the one above with the wax cappings, the honeybees will not associate the cappings with their hive and they will rob all the honey that’s in amongst the wax cappings and take it down into the super.

Clever eh? When they have cleaned that up, and they do… remove the feeder tray and you can start adding their wet supers to the hives as and when they are needed.

It’s not as complicated as it sounds. I apologise for not videoing this but it’s been a crazy few weeks and I forgot to take my tripod to the apiary. I’ll do a video when I take the summer harvest off.

Well my friends… another week done and the girls have done well. Very well in fact. And I will never cease to be in admiration of all their hard work and full of gratitude for what we gain as a result of it; not just the honey… the beautiful flowers, fruit and vegetables etc. They are, as I always say, incredible creatures. I like to think of the honey as our reward for looking after them.

As always I leave you with a quote… this time from Whinnie the Pooh!

Have a wonderful week.