First harvest of backyard honey!

[Arpolis]

Good day to everyone!

Today is an exciting day. I am a technically 2nd year bee keeper but year one was a wild swarm that did not make it so 1st year successfull bee keeper or "beek". My bees have done so well. I have at minimum 3 more weeks of time for bees to harvest and possibly more in the year and my bees have filled 30 deep foundationless frames with honey or brood. Probably 18 of the frames are pure honey with most capped off and others still being worked on. I do not want to take much from my bees first year but thought it safe to harvest 1 capped frame and one partially capped frame and see what the honey is like.

I built a simple crush and strain device made of two food safe 5 gallon buckets, a honey gate to drain the strained honey off and a nylon paint strainer bag.

So far after only 10 - 15 min of letting the honey strain I filled two quart plastic jars or about 4.5lb of honey. Just think next year when I havest 10 - 15 frames full with honey. That could be 42 - 63 pounds of honey minimum! The honey is an in-city honey made up of what ever the city planted acros the highway and anything randomly planted in the residential area. The honey is really dark. Not like buckwheat but just much darker than anything at the super market here are a couple pics of one of the jars:

 

[Arpolis]

 

[paperairplane]

Congrats - I am on year 4 and have 2 hives. I get about 4 gallons from each hive, each year. I have never used any chemicals and don't feed my hives. I leave at least a deep super full of honey on each over winter.

 

[Arpolis]

Very cool. I actually plan on trying to do a couple splits next year and hope to raise a couple queens. Fingers crossed I can breed me a couple new hives next year.

 

[rlmiller10]

I made a two frame honey extractor that I would be glad to send you the instructions to make. PM me with an email address and I will send it. I tried to upload the doc as an attachment but it says it is too large.

 

[WVMJ]

Congrats Aropolis, and on your control not to take all the honey and just feed them sugar water back. The first mead you make from this, make sure to save one bottle for a long long time, maybe open it when you put in your hundredth hive! This is how it gets started, you get one hive thru the first year, start planning on expanding, then the next year you will have some extra queens and so will get extra bees and before you know it you got 100 hives and can open that special first bottle WVMJ

 

[jammin]

Very cool!

My grandpa used to be a beekeeper when I was a kid. We had a whole warehouse of them which we'd run from Washington to California.

He still keeps a few colonies in his garden. I always enjoy watching them when I visit

 

[rlmiller10]

Congrats Aropolis, and on your control not to take all the honey and just feed them sugar water back. The first mead you make from this, make sure to save one bottle for a long long time, maybe open it when you put in your hundredth hive! This is how it gets started, you get one hive thru the first year, start planning on expanding, then the next year you will have some extra queens and so will get extra bees and before you know it you got 100 hives and can open that special first bottle WVMJ

Ha Ha. I made my first mead from my honey last year and my daughter (8 years old at the time) already claimed a bottle to be saved for her graduation. I hope to make a batch every year and save a bottle so I can present her with a set, one from each year, when she gets married.

 

[bobby4]

I have about 260 pounds this year from 4 hives (2 originals and 2 swarms that cooperated and did their thing when I was home). I have to admit I have't done mead yet, but this fall I am going to give it a whirl.


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[rlmiller10]

I have about 260 pounds this year from 4 hives (2 originals and 2 swarms that cooperated and did their thing when I was home). I have to admit I have't done mead yet, but this fall I am going to give it a whirl.


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That is an incredible harvest. Very good job.

 

[Kblandfo]

Very cool

 

[Arpolis]

I have about 260 pounds this year from 4 hives (2 originals and 2 swarms that cooperated and did their thing when I was home). I have to admit I have't done mead yet, but this fall I am going to give it a whirl.


Sent from my iPhone using Home Brew

Well done! I hope to get 2/3 of that here in a couple years once I expand out to 4 hives.

 

[beekeeperman]

Congrats on a good honey year. 2nd year beek here, had to start over this year due to
winter kills. Got local nucs this time and they seem to be doing well.
Pulled 2 frames of natural comb capped honey from my strong hive a couple weeks back and did the crush and strain extraction method. Very nice honey .

Just got into a gallon of mead we started almost 6 mos ago, whooooaaaaaaaa !

Anyhow the bees are keeping the rest of the honey for winter survival. Both hives
have about 70 lbs of honey in them. Hoping for some survivors this time around.

 

[bobby4]

Production is a funny thing, in 2012 four hives going into the winter. I lost one in the winter, then one in the summer of 2013 (this used to be very rare, but is becoming more common now). The two hives did almost nothing in 2013, and I had less than 60 pounds. This year the weather wasn't great, yet they went like gangbusters - this might be our biggest year.

Good luck with the winter, losing hives is always painful for hobbyists like us. I have been fortunate and only had one year with nothing left after winter. I have been very fortunate with swarms - they seem to swarm a lot when I am around (or else as my wife says they swarm a huge number of times and I am only around for a few, lol). Swarm catching in a good location is the opposite of losing a hive, it is a huge thrill.