Extracting in the comfort of the Dower House...

One of the problems of a cold house is that honey doesn’t flow once summer is over. As extraction time is generally in the autumn it means I either have to be quick or leave the supers on the hive until spring. This year I was late taking the supers off and ended up with them in the house. A problem with my manual extractor meant it was taking half an hour to extract four frames and even then a fair bit of honey was still in the cells. It seems the basket needs to be lifted slightly so the cogs connect but until I can get it taken apart and checked, I have had to stop extracting.

Record breaking cold weather in December didn’t help either, so the honey has sat in the front room since it came off the hive. Thankfully, as a member of Manchester & District Beekeepers Association I have access to a pretty good set of equipment in a good-sized, purpose-built room in Heaton Park. They have everything there: a warming room, uncapping tank, electric extractor, various filters, and big sinks. So last week we popped down and left our four remaining supers in the warming room so when we went back this week they’d be easier to extract.

Two hours sounds like plenty of time but when you have to cut the cappings off each frame, a total of twenty, then load the extractor, spin for ten minutes, empty and repeat, then time disappears. Cleaning everything afterwards took over an hour so we were over time by the time we’d finished. But it was worth the sweating to get it all done. Due to a memory lapse, where I didn’t record how much was extracted from the first super of the year, the official amount of honey we recorded from last year is probably a few pounds lower than the actual amount, but at 170lbs (that’s 78kgs in new money) I think that’s not a bad season’s harvest for only two hives.

I am glad now I bought a gross and a half of jars, so at least we have somewhere to put it. All I have to do now is jar it up before it sets, otherwise we’ll be eating it out of a bucket.

The sticky has landed

After much messing, we finally got the honey into jars.

Agnieszka decided to clean the pan herself, which saved me a job.

Stickier than Sticky the stick insect's sticky situation

There has been quite extensive coverage over the summer of the threat faced by the bee population from disease, varroa mites and Colony Collapse Disorder with a prediction that English honey will run out by Christmas and that, without significant increases in the research budget into bee health, bees may disappear entirely within ten years.

I know a number of beekeepers who emerged from last winter with severely reduced colonies, or none at all, and the whole bee year has been much slower than usual. As a late starter, getting my colony at the beginning of July, I was quite prepared just to build up the strength of the hive and get it ready to go into winter in a good position. I was fully resigned to the fact I might not get any honey this year but a late burst of warm and sunny weather has meant that my colony has improved beyond all expectations and furnished me with my very first honey crop.

On Sunday me and Agnieszka went to the Dower House to extract the honey from the 25 frames our bees had produced. This is in addition to the super I have left for them as winter stores. They have in excess of 30lb of capped honey which should be plenty to see them through until the sun starts to poke its thin, watery fingers through winter’s gloom. That point seems a long way off but for now we have honey to see us through.

Extraction is made easy at Manchester beekeepers because we have the use of good equipment in a purpose-built room which is, as any of the people who run the club will tell you, the envy of every other beekeeping association in the land. Despite the range of equipment, you still get sticky. Very sticky. Here’s why.

First you put on a protective coat, so that the stickiness goes on that.
Then you use the uncapping fork to take the wax caps off the frames of honey.
Place them into the extractor, where they are spun until the honey is ‘flicked’ out, taking care to load it evenly, otherwise broken frames and bouncing machine is the result.
Pour out the honey into buckets.
Clean everything.

I thought I did quite well, only washing my hands about 50 times and getting it on my trousers, shirt and up my sleeve. It’s now all over the door handles and steering wheel of the car and just about everywhere else. By the time we have everything cleaned, it’ll be near enough time to do it again. Thanks to Agnieszka for doing most of that while I was faffing about.

So how much did we get? Well, we filled almost to the top, three 15lb buckets, plus three jars from the cappings (another 4lbs). considering some people haven’t had anything this autumn, I think I did quite well but am wary of something I read in a gardening book: beginners do well in their first season because they are careful, they don’t know much and they take pains to get it right. In the second season, they know more, experiment more, make more mistakes and thus don’t produce as much, be it veg or honey. So I must be careful to carry on practising good hive hygiene, careful management and be open to new techniques and ideas. That way my bees will be happy and I will carry on having a fascinating and productive hobby for years to come.