September 4, 2009
Time to harvest!
Our two hives produced 6 supers of honey - one hive producing four and the other two. (It's a good idea for a new beekeeper to start with two hives - this way you can compare the two against each other).
We purchsed a used and older model extracter (cheap) and completely recoated it with a rubber food safe sealant before using it.
Each frame of honey was decapped using a hand decapping fork, since this being our first year we didn't really care about collecting the wax. Then frames were loaded into the extractor and spun until each frame contained only the wax comb remained. Any trace amounts of honey that is still on the frames will be fed back to the bees.
That first drop of honey was exciting to say the least. It took us most of the day, (always set aside a full day), to extract all the frames into 5 gallon, food safe buckets.
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