The harvest this year wasn't too good, only fourteen frames of honey. Of those fourteen five are only partly ready to go and they are dark honey so we'll be processing those by hand, no extractor. The other nine went through the extractor I'm borrowing from a friend.
Using an extractor to spin the honey out of the frames was supposed to be easier than the old crush-and-strain method but I have to say for only nine frames it isn't worth the extra setup and cleanup. I was expecting to have at least 30 frames but found that most of the hives didn't have any honey for me this year. Only two hives produced enough honey for me to take some!
The best part of this is that the frames I put through the extractor will be ready to go next year with the wax comb waiting to be filled. This is great for preventing a booming hive from swarming, when they run out of wax comb the queen stops producing bees and the hive splits. That is a good thing if you can get two hives out of it but if you send thousands of bees flying into a city that is a bad thing.
Wow, half the number you wanted... ugh.
ReplyDeleteIf you end up with any honeycomb rather than just... sucking it out with a magic honey vacuum or whatever it is, Crackadactyl likes to gnaw on it and would buy it from you.
Also, sending thousands of bees flying into a city is only a bad thing if you are NOT a supervillain.