The harvest is a very small part of raising bees, the best part or the disappointing part. We have already started planning on next year’s plan. Right now the frame boxes are sitting outside on the garage slab, the bees are cleaning up this year’s frames that we just got done harvesting. They will strip all the remaining honey out and take it somewhere. Once the boxes are cleaned up by the bees (about a week or so), I’ll move them into the garage to be stored.

 

During the winter I’ll go though the boxes and frames, one by one, scraping all the excess wax off the frames, so they’ll be clean for next year., that’s a time consuming project but not very difficult, we had about 12 boxes and 120 frames this year. I use a paint scraper. It’ll be an inspection of the frames, occasionally they get broken and need to be repaired or discarded.

 

 

About Jan or Feb our bee provider will send out a catalog and urge us to pre- order, of course they are looking at keeping the free money in advance but it gives them some idea of what their sales will be. Honey bees are a perishable item and can’t be returned.

 

This year we ordered four hives’ worth, 12 pounds. They come in 3 lb packages. We installed them in two places, about 4-5 miles apart, put up the electric fence, about the first of May. We bought some high protein food (looks like corn syrup, maybe has some additive). Anyway, one of my hives didn’t look good the following day and by the second day the bees were all dead. It had never happened before and we were at a loss, like $170 loss. We found a bee keeper that sold ‘nukes’, which is a 6 frame box with a queen and already producing new bees, so we bought that @ $145 and traded out all the dead bee equipment and restarted with fresh equipment. Now we’re in for around $800 and we haven’t got a drop of honey.

 

 

During the summer we inspect the hives about every two weeks, any frames that are full get pulled and stored in a freezer. Replace the empty spaces in the hive boxes. We had a serious drought during May, June and July, very few flowers and all summer production was looking bleak. The a little rain came in August and the bees got busy and did their jobs. Anecdotally, it seemed that there were a lot of yellow jackets and wasps around the hives, my guess was that they were busy stealing what little honey was being produced.

 

In August we started getting more production and when we closed out in September we were a couple happy campers. A freezer full of frames, 2 refrigerator freezers full and a couple boxes that we left out. After the last pull, this year a week before HH we moved my bees to my partner’s bees, we borrowed a little space from a person that lives near a lake, open fields and a big garden. That eliminates most of the bees from the HH working area.

 

 

By this time we’ve alerted all the Glibs (Thanks, Tundra) and all the locals. We have to get our equipment ready, takes a day or two, borrow chairs and on the third Sunday of September let the fun begin. We had 5 hardworking people, plus me and started about 9 AM. This year we had pulled pork as the meat, done by a caterer and all the wonderful food the ladies have cooked up or stopped by Costco along the way. In any case there was lots to eat.

 

Back to work, until 6:30 PM, the ladies brought out food for us again and a half hour later we were working, finally quitting for the day about 9PM, almost done. Monday morning the crew showed up again and finished the honey and cleaned up most of the equipment. As it turned out we had a pretty good year, in spite of a slow start.

 

Then leave the hive boxes outside, where they still are, and let the bees clean them out. The eight boxes at our alternate spot are still full of bees, doing their best to prepare for winter, but when the weather dips into -20s and -30s the bees will die from the cold. We’ve tried to winter them over but every time failed. In January we’ll pick up those boxes and clean them up as we did the others.

 

It seems that local honey and maple syrup trade about the same prices. Maple syrup has a lot of hard work for a short time whereas honey has less work and really only one long day. Hours spent are probably about the same. Last year and this year kept some folks away, worrying about the virus. Apparently the vaccine doesn’t work for old people.