The honey crop is in for the year.

Bees Boardman suffered a couple hours of the frantics while I went through their hives stealing honey all the way.

Having been at this beekeeping thing for awhile now, I’ve adopted a “no big deal” sort of attitude toward beestings. They’re just part of the territory and really don’t phase me much.

But yesterday during the roundup I did have a little unusual trouble with some extra frisky bees getting inside my veil. Even though stings don’t generally bother me, I really don’t like having bees flying around my face in attack mode inside close quarters.

So let’s just say the bees won a couple rounds but I won the war.  The honey came off the hives yesterday and at about 10:00 this morning I started extracting. Here are some pictures of the process.

Capped honey in the frame

This is what the honey looks like in the “frame.”  Don’t they do a nice job of packing it in?

Here’s the same frame once the wax cappings have been removed and it’s “bleeding” the warm liquid.  It’s on its way into the extractor.

Uncapped frame

Since I extract a relatively small amount each year, my extractor is of the hand-crank variety…good exercise and just as effective as the motorized type.

Cranking the extractor

Honey flows from the extractor

Honey being filtered

So there you have it. I took just over ten gallons from seven hives, which, though not as much as I would have liked, is not too bad considering I basically started from scratch this year.

If I can get the majority of them through the winter, next season should be better.

You’re in Boardman Country!

Make yourself at home,

Brad