Guest Spot: The First Honey Harvest by Robert Altham (part two)
I took the fames up to the GPs house in the next village and learnt about the honey extraction process. First the de-capping. This is the removal of the wax cap on the comb. We did it with a bread knife, sawing along each side of the frame. It is a seriously messy job if you are not careful, and it is quite hard work too. Next year I shall try using a hot air gun and melt the wax caps off. Each de-capped frame is put into the centrifuge. This is a large cylindrical device that holds the frames of honey for spinning. When the centrifuge is full...
read moreGuest Spot: The First Honey Harvest by Robert Altham (part one)
Robert Altham is in his first year of beekeeping and successfully collected over thirty pounds of honey from his bees. He has kindly written this article for us, describing the experience and the process. Follow the link at the bottom of the page to view his own blog. The First Honey Harvest I am a complete beginner at bee keeping. I bought a hive on Ebay in May. I collected it from Lowestoft and drove back with the have and a full colony of bees in the back of my car. My hive comprised of the brood chamber where the queen lays her eggs and...
read moreOur first honey harvest
All summer long we’ve dreamt about the first honey harvest from our very own bees. We live in the centre of a large rural village. As bees fly in a 1.5 mile radius from their hive, we reckoned that our autumn honey harvest would largely come from spring and summer garden flowers, flowering trees and clover. And of course, our honey would be exceptional. We spent hours looking at the colour of the pollen in the tiny baskets that bees have on their legs. You can match it to the pollen colours on a little colour card that indicates where...
read moreAngry bees chased me down the garden
We want to harvest our honey. Honey is stored by the bees in the part of the hive called a super. There is at least one super on every hive and often two or three more. In the photo of our smaller hive alongside, the super is the top white box. It sits above the deeper brood box. The usual hive set up is floor, brood box, queen excluder, super(s), crown board and roof. The simplest method of clearing bees from the honey supers is to fit tiny metal sprung one way doorways that will allow bees to leave the supers and not return. These doors are...
read moreBirthday beekeeping
It’s Danny’s birthday today. As requested, I gave him a very smart pair of washable beekeeping gloves and a hive tool. It was quite hard buying gloves for him when he was working away from home and not available to try them on. I buy most of my beekeeping supplies from John, at the Springwell Apiary in Little Chesterford, near Saffron Walden. You need to ring him before visiting so contact me for his phone number and email address (through our contact us page). John explained that there are basically two types of hands, those...
read moreThe role of Beekeeper’s Assistant is now a permanent position
When Danny asked for a pair of beekeeping gloves and a hive tool for his birthday, I realised that he was finally hooked. He’d been very keen for me to keep bees but assured me that he would not be involved in anything except eating the honey. That was fine with me, I was happy to attend the courses of the Cambridgeshire Beekeepers Association. The empty hive looked great beside the pond and it looked even better when the new colony was installed and bees were drifting in and out. It was only when I bought home the nucleus colony that I...
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