• Tag Archives extractor
  • Bee-Keeping, The Third Year

    Fall                                                         Full Autumn Moon

    Our revels now have ended.  The very last of the year’s harvest, four-foot long decorative squash and birdhouse style gourds, Kate brought in yesterday. 

    The bees are done for the year.  Two colonies will die over the winter and the third, with luck, will survive.  Even if it does, this is my last  year for overwintering colonies.  The part-time, small quantity operation we have here doesn’t justify the extra work of mite treatments, concern over various ailments only caught by colonies that survive from one year to the next and the inhibited production of the colony developing as a parent colony.

    Artemis Hives now has two honey harvests under its belt in this, the third year of bee-keeping here.  Kate and I have developed a work flow.  She takes care of wooden ware, uncapping frames and bottling while I put foundations into the frames, manage the colonies, remove the honey supers and bring them to the house and insert them in the extractor.

    Three hives, or even two, will make honey enough for us and our friends.  The process is more straightforward after three seasons, now heading into the fourth.  The bees have become part of our life here, like the perennials, the vegetables, the orchard and the dogs before them.

    We also have the beginning of a label collection with 2010 and 2011 labels designed and produced by Woolly Mammoth Mark Odegard.


  • Harvest Day

    Lughnasa                                                      Waxing Harvest Moon

    Yesterday during the honey harvest (before the swarm) activity shifted among pulling frames from honey supers, delivering them for uncapping (Kate), getting them set in the extractor and going downstairs to work on Mark’s Saudi visa.  Shifting from the concrete tasks of honey to the abstract and electronic tasks associated with the visa application caused some mental whiplash.

    We had a few setup problems.  In fastening the extractor to the deck (again) we positioned the rack so we had to work with it in the rear, clumsy but not impossible.  After we got it in place, we loaded it up with fresh frames full of honey.

    Turned it on.  Nothing moved except the electric motor.  Neither Kate nor I are what I would call mechanical geniuses so we dithered with it, trying this and that, until we discovered it needed the top snugged against one side to allow the motor to mate with the rod connected to the centrifuge.  After that the extraction moved along as  planned.

    Not sure on the total yet but we have at least double last year’s harvest, maybe more.  Now, though, we have to bottle it and get its moisture content checked.  Anything with a moisture content below 19.6 (if I recall correctly) is grade A honey and will keep forever though it may crystallize.  Just warm it up and it will become liquid again.

    Honey with too much moisture will start to ferment.  This may be ok with you.

    The harvest took from around 10 am until 3:45 or so.  It was at that point that I decided to test my bee’s perimeter defense with my head.