Honey, Sweet Honey

We visited Hollis' farm today for the use of his excellent manual extractor... a machine which uses centrifugal force to spin out the frames. Mostly it was all capped, so we use a 'cappings fork' to scrape the 'lids' off the comb and place into the spinner. There was a small pail (~10 lbs) of light honey which came from the uncapped parts first spun, kept separate. This is honey that is very light amber and liquid (runny) since the bees weren't quite done with it (hadn't removed all the moisture and capped it yet). That might ferment sooner, so it will be used first. (More about MEAD to follow as well, as H. suggested to us that batch is a good source to make it.)

Next we uncapped, and spun out ~35 lbs. of the deeper, more viscous golden elixir, as the poet Lorca put it, "the epic of love/the materialization of the infinite/the soul and the blood of flowers". Absolute delight. We also saved the cappings and the wax for candles. P'raps a picture or two to follow. Next we'll jar it up for friends and family! Yayyy!
edit: pic!

We gave back the supers for the bees to clean out, but will likely put them away in a couple of days for next spring. Leaving on the original brood box, the second brood box, the queen excluder, and the dadant super from last week for now. H. suggests we take them down to a single box for the winter. We're looking into questions of size and medicine now, thinking about splitting the hive and growing a new queen, probably will wait until spring now, since the blackberry flowers have all pretty much turned into lil'green berries now. A top bar hive? Maybe building our own with a viewing panel? Lots to research and think about for the future. For now, we know that our mysterious unidentified queen is an amazing layer!


All is tinder dry here... note to self to make sure smoker is fully extinguished before setting it down in the dry grass...

Rainfall totals for July 2010 @ YVR: 0.6 mm (usu. average for July is 40 mm)