Sunday, August 19, 2012

Harvesting honey

Removed honey from both hives and began processing Sat 8/18.
Took 9 frames from Pkg hive, and 18 frames from swarm hive.
Surprised there was so much honey there. The capped honey is
so thick it hardly comes out of the centrifuge. We worked
until midnight spinning frames, and have left quite a bit of
honey on there because it wasn't coming out. Today the last
set of frames is being heated up in hopes they will clean out
more completely. We did start work yesterday when it was
quite warm (Chris garage), but it did cool down as the evening
progressed.

After removing and redistributing supers:

Package hive:

------------
top cover
inner cover
super (mostly empty, left on hive because there is not
        enough to process, but bees still working on it.)
queen excluder
super (really full of capped honey)
hive body
hive body
bottom board
------------


Swarm hive:

------------
top cover
inner cover
super (another work in progress)
queen excluder
super (very full of capped honey)
hive body
hive body
bottom board
------------

We didn't actually take the hives apart below the queen excluders.
Activity in the hive looks good, there are quite a few bees,
and judging from the super we left in there is plenty of honey.

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