honey

How Much Honey?

Honey box filled with honey

Honey box filled with honey

It’s the big question everyone has when we harvest a honey box. How much honey is in there?
Family wants to know, “Will we get some for Christmas?”
Colleagues ask, “Will you have any to sell this year?
Mr. Beekeeper asks, “How many pounds did I carry up from the bee yard?”
Mrs. Beekeeper asks, “How many jars do I need?”

One day this week found Mr. Beekeeper and Junior Beekeeper at home together. With the Star Beekeepers aligned, it was surely the day to harvest honey.

Removing the honey box

Removing the honey box

A peek through the queen excluder at the bees.

A peek through the queen excluder at the bees.

Hive D. We took the lower brown box and kept the top box on for a potential fall harvest.

Hive D. We took the lower brown box and kept the top box on for a potential fall harvest.

Only one honey box was harvested this time. Hive D had clearly finished filling one honey box but was still working on their second one. We leave that to them to continue to fill. Hive A, new this year and thriving, already filling two hive body boxes, received a honey box just a couple of weeks ago. We leave them to their work.
Hives B and C, who had come through winter with one hive box, have struggled to fill a second hive box. They currently have no honey boxes on them at all. Hive C had a honey box, but it was removed and given to Hive A.

Junior beekeeper examines the honey box

Junior beekeeper examines the honey box

So we harvested one honey box. In the fall we will see if we can harvest some more.

Junior Beekeeper spins the honey while his sister watches

Junior Beekeeper spins the honey while his sister watches

This was Junior Beekeeper’s first experience with spinning honey. Grandma Beekeeper has been working her arms lifting grandbabies and willingly handed the privilege of honey spinning to the Oldest Grandchild.

He also learned a physics lesson about centrifugal force. As he turns the crank, a basket containing two frames spins round and round, faster and faster the harder he cranks. The honey is pulled out of the frames to the side of the container. When he stops spinning, the honey slides to the bottom of the container. We open the valve and pour honey into the bucket. It’s just like that ride at the fair that he dislikes so much…the one where you spin and stick to the side walls while the floor drops out from beneath you. (Junior Beekeeper is more of a Tower of Terror guy.)

Straggler bee in the wax cappings a day later...right before his water ride

Straggler bee in the wax cappings a day later…right before his water ride

And sure enough, that’s exactly what happened to a lone bee who got processed with the honey. He got spun and dripped out onto the filter. Another lone bee got stuck in the cappings which were also placed on the filter to drain. He was still barely moving the next day when it was time to process the wax. Alas, he went down the drain on a “water ride.” Some people think raw honey should not be filtered, but I personally prefer my honey without dead bees in it.

Spinning the honey is a lot easier than scooping 48,000 cells with a little spoon

Spinning the honey is a lot easier than scooping 43,000 cells with a little spoon

So, how much honey is in a honey box? Time for some math.
There are 9 frames in each honey box.
Each side of each frame contains about 80 x 30 honey comb cells. That’s 2400 little cells per side…or 4800 per frame times 9 frames. That comes to 43,000 little cells filled by busy bees.

 

 

Frame filled with capped honey

Frame filled with capped honey

Or about 3 gallons.
One pound of honey equals 1 1/4 cups. We have about 48 cups. So maybe we’ll get 38 one pound jars of honey.

Maywood Honey 2014

Maywood Honey 2014: a delicate fruity blend of black locust, wild  grape, and wildflowers.

Which means Christmas gifts of honey will be liquid gold and jars for sale will have to wait until we see what we get in the fall. Or if one of the weak hives fails to make it, then we get all their honey. But who wants a hive to fail?

The hot, dry air of winter

This is the winter that will not die.

Some people are tired of the cold.  It’s March–when the bees are supposed to emerge to pollinate budding  red maples– and the weather forecast is still calling for a temperature of ZERO.

Some people are sick of the snow.  My husband, for example, is outside right now chopping more firewood in anticipation of the next sleet/ice/snow/bring-down-the-power lines weather event.  The tractor is constantly hooked to a charger to ensure its ability to start when plowing is next needed.  (That would be in the next couple of days.)

Me?  I’m sick of the hot, dry indoor air.  It is so dry around here that salt is actually pouring out of the salt shakers.  When does that ever happen?  We usually have the salt shaker half filled with rice to soak up the moisture in the air.  This morning I came close to ruining my egg; the salt came out so fast.

It is so dry around here that my hair wants to look like this:

She wasn't swishing her hair. It was sticking straight out after an encounter with the sofa.

She wasn’t swishing her hair. It was sticking straight out after an encounter with the sofa.

Fortunately I have a bathroom full of products to help me look a little more like a grown-up: volumizing shampoo, moisturizing conditioners,  ultra poufy mousse, anchor-it in-place sprays, and shiny stuff to give the illusion of sunlight reflecting off it.  It all sort of works.  My hair isn’t quite as bad as sweet little Emily’s, but it is craving humidity.

And so is my skin.  Ack!  Every night I go to bed with my feet slathered in moisturizer and tucked into socks.  My hands, too, are lotioned and gloved.  I look like Minnie Mouse without the ears.  And still my skin is like sandpaper.  My lip balm recipe (in larger containers!) works great on my hands and feet, but is not too practical for full-body application.  My whole body really needs a milk bath.  Lactic acid, ladies.  It sloughs off that dry skin and leaves the rest nice and soft.

This the winter where the least little thing will set off an episode of eczema.  I touched chalk the other day.  I was reckless, I know.  I did not use my special chalk holder.  It was in my desk because I hardly use chalk anymore.  I just wanted to tally points for a competitive activity in class.  A few measly little slash marks on the board.  Ka-bam.  Circle of eczema on my hand.

I was moaning about this with my hairdresser who moaned back that she has gotten eczema on her neck this winter.  She’s dumbfounded.  Her neck?  A friend of mine gets it on her eyelids.  Yes, ouch.

My eyelid suffering friend has found the bees to be part of her skin care routine.  She uses honey to help soothe and heal her eczema flare-ups.

Here’s her concoction:

Lisa’s Honey Mask

  • 1 tablespoon of honey (Maywood honey, of course!)
  • “some” freshly  grated nutmeg
  • 3-4 capsules of Vitamin E.

Grate “some” nutmeg into the honey.  Cut open the Vitamin E and mix it in with the honey/nutmeg.  Apply to face and leave on for 30-60 minutes.  Rinse it off.   (I suppose you could leave it on, but your pillowcase will probably attract ants.)

A bad case of eczema will still require medicine from the dermatologist, but Lisa finds she gets the best results when she uses both the medicine and the honey mask together.  After a few days, the eczema improves rapidly.  Then she just uses the honey when she has a flare-up.

Sweet!

Honey Harvest 2012

Maywood Honey 2012

If there’s anything more satisfying to a beekeeper than seeing buckets of harvested honey, it is seeing that golden sweetness in jars.  It’s a little bit  arrogant on our part to take pride in a good harvest since the bees make the honey, but there’s enough work on the part of the beekeeper to justify it.  Thousands of cranks of the honey-spinner and sixty-seven jars of honey later, we can rightly call it our harvest.  And it’s a yummy one too.

Last weekend, we spent a calm morning in the bee yard.  Our goal was three-fold.  First, to collect four honey boxes.  Second, to do so without making the bees really angry at us.  And third, to get the honey back to the house without bringing along a horde of buzzing companions.  That third goal was not insignificant!

Off to the bee-yard

Very few bees in this honey box because of an effective bee-escape

John’s pre-harvest preparations were overall pretty helpful.  The bee escapes that he put on the hives significantly reduced the number of bees in the honey boxes of Hives A and B.  Hive C still had a honey box full of bees.  John wonders if perhaps the bee escape got blocked with burr comb.  And Hive D’s honey box was empty but they had not been doing anything up there anyway.

Setting the fume board on a hive

To clear out the honey box on Hive C and to clear away the cloud of Hive A bees who were looking for a fight, John used the fume board.  The fume board is a hive lid that you squirt with a nasty smelling liquid.  The bees can’t stand the smell and dive deep into the hive.  Humans aren’t too crazy about the smell either, which explains why the bottle was shipped in a bazillion layers of plastic wrap.  After a few minutes of fume board, the honey box is nicely empty of bees and John can easily remove the honey boxes and load them onto the tractor cart for transport to the house.  The fume boards get stored in the cabin where we don’t have to smell them.

Taking the honey to the houseWith the hives closed back up and the honey boxes covered with plastic to keep bees off, John brings the honey to the house.  We take the honey inside immediately and, after a quick beer (hey, it was hot in those beesuits!), begin spinning the honey.  Honey is dripping off the boxes and we want to get it  contained  before the ants find out that there is a party in the mudroom.  The mudroom, by the way, is so clean you could almost lick the honey off the floor.  (Almost being the operative word here.)  Amazingly, considering the thousands and thousands of bees down at the hives, only four (that’s right, 4) bees make it into the house.  They are unceremoniously but apologetically squashed.  (For all you theology nerds, that means that we were sorry to kill them but we gave a good defense on why we had to–namely, self-defense.)

Removing the cap

At the sink, John cuts the caps off the frames of honey.  The wax is put in a colander to drain into a pot.  I’ll deal with the wax later.  The frames, now oozing honey, are placed into the honey spinner.  The spinner is a big low-tech centrifuge made out of what looks like a plastic trash can.  It works with good ol’ fashioned elbow grease.  Round and round I spin the handle while inside the tank the honey spins out of the comb and drips to the bottom of the tank.  Let’s just say that it is a good upper arm work-out.  There are lovely stainless steel electric models that one could buy for hundreds of dollars, but until the spinning sets me up for another joint replacement or we get a lot more hives, the manual model will suffice.

Spinning the honey out of the combs

From spinner down into the bucket

One of our favorite moments in the harvest is when the honey starts pouring from the spinner into the storage bucket below.  The deep golden sweetness oozes from the spininer, passes through a filter, and fills up the bucket.  This year we had to buy a second bucket.  All told, we collected about six gallons of honey.

Buckets of honey waiting for jars.

After a few days, the air bubbles settle out of the honey, my arms recover, and my order of jars arrives. Now it is time to jar the honey. An evening is spent filling the jars, writing “Maywood Honey 2012” on sixty-seven self-adhesive labels, slapping them on the jars, and wiping the stickiness away.  Stickiness, by the way, is everywhere–the jars, the counters, the floor all have a slight film of honey.  And bits of propolis, which is what bees use instead of duct tape.  Propolis on a counter can’t be wiped; it has to be scraped off.  And then you have to figure out how to scrape it off the scraper.

Finally, it is all done.  The harvest is in.   The kitchen island gleems with jars of golden-brown honey.  A celebratory bowl of maple walnut ice cream drizzled with our own honey is my reward.

Preparing for the honey harvest

I want that honey!

Today was  an exciting day as we got the hives ready for harvest.

Today’s tasks:  to put bee escapes on the honey  boxes and  put entrance reducers on the front entrance to the hives.  The goals:

The beekeepers, with junior bee-guy just observing today

(1) to get the bees to exit the honey box without getting back in, and

(2) to try to prevent robbing by minimizing the size of the hive opening.

We were also able to look in the honey boxes and assess how much honey we will collect.  As an added perk, we collected some burr comb and had our first taste of this season’s honey.  The plan is to harvest this coming Saturday.  I can justifiably say “we” now because I have my own beesuit and can do more than just watch, even though today I mostly just watched.  Our junior beekeeper did not suit up today, as he had already changed to go play with friends.  He stood in my usual observer’s spot and picked the bark off his walking stick.

John and I recently read a good beekeeping book, Confessions of a Bad Beekeeper, by Bill Turnbill.  In it, Bill shares many things he learned from mistakes, such as not closing up every little flap on his beesuit and, as a result, getting stung by a bee inside his veil.  I thought of him as I very carefully zipped my suit closed.  I thought of him again as John and I assessed “what we learned today.”

We learned:

  • Burr comb

    When you prep the hive for harvest, go prepared to deal with burr comb.  We had nothing with us to put it in.  John didn’t want to plop it on the ground because the scent of all that honey might instigate robbing.  Plus, we wanted to taste the honey.  So, I had to run back up to the house to get a container with lid.  Meanwhile the hive was open with the scent of honey wafting around the bee yard.

  • He’s smokin’! But he forgot to bring the entrance reducers.

    Also, if you plan to put entrance reducers on, you should actually bring them with you.  This time John ran back to the house while I stood in the bee yard with a plastic container full of beeswax and live bees.  As bees made their way to the top, I would shoo them off and away.  Many, though, were trapped in layers of dripping wax.  I could almost hear them calling to their comrades: ” I’m trapped!  Help!  Get the jaws of life and get me out of here!”  Others, alas, were doomed, drowned at the  bottom of the container in a puddle of honey.  I was so fascinated watching them that I didn’t even take pictures.

  • Nailing the bee escapes in place

    It would be a good idea to have extra honey  box lids with the bee escapes already attached.  John thought the bee escapes would just fit over the exit but they had to be nailed tight.  It was awkward trying to hammer a tiny nail with a hive tool while wearing gloves, so John took off  a glove to hold the nail while banging on the honey box with his hive tool.  I can’t think of a better way to get someone angry with me than banging on their house before stealing their stuff.  He did not get stung, though.

    Bees entering and exiting the honey box.

With the bee escape in place, bees can exit the honey box but must re-enter the hive through the front entrance. This should make it easier for us to take the honey–there won’t be so many bees in the honey box.

  • We learned that Hive D is lazy.  Even with the addition of a honey box to get them moving, the honey box was quite clean.

  • The orange stuff is propolis.

    Hive A makes the most propolis.  Propolis is like bee caulk.  They use it to seal the hive.  They did a fine job filling their honey box, after a slow start which necessitated requeening the hive.

  • Hive C did a great job filling their honey.  They are a new hive, like Hive D,  but they are producing better.

  • One of many full frames

    Hive B, going gangbusters since the first sign of spring, has filled the better part of two honey boxes.  Way to go, Hive B.

  • So, on a positive note, we learned that we have four honey boxes pretty much full of honey.  Woo hoo!  This looks to be our biggest harvest yet.

  • Straining the burr comb for a pre-harvest snack. Yes, the dead bees are in there. That’s why we’re straining it!

    The honey is a beautiful golden color with hints of tulip poplar and other florals.  Not as strong in flavor as our wonderfully pungent first harvest, it has more presence than our last harvest, which was light and delicate.

    Preview of this year’s honey!

Saturday, weather permitting, is harvest day.  It’s time to order more jars.

Harvesting the honey

Let the honey harvest begin!  Sunday afternoon John began harvesting honey.  A sudden thunderstorm cut his work short, so he only pulled frames from one hive.  The rest will have to wait until next weekend.  He was able to pull ten frames of honey from that one hive, yielding about four gallons of honey.  We’ll know more exactly once we’ve put it into jars.

Brushing bees off the frame

In this picture, John has smoked the hive using smelly stuff   to drive the bees deep into the hive to avoid having them attack him.  (He’ll correct me on this.  I don’t know what the smelly stuff is called, probably “Smelly Stuff.” ) He pulls out each frame to check that the honey has been capped.  Uncapped honey–nectar– is not yet ready to be harvested.  Frames that are fully capped he pulls from the hive and replaces with an empty frame.   He uses a soft brush to swish bees off the frame.  Experience is such a wonderful teacher.  Last year he did not use the smelly stuff effectively or use a brush and we had a horde of bees in the backyard all afternoon.  And then this spring we had an appearance of bees in the basement.  That was not cool.  This year only two bees made it back to the house with him. 

Cutting the caps off the frame

Here John cuts the caps from the frame so that we can access the honey.  Frames are placed two at a time in our super-fancy honeyspinner.  This super sophisticated device resembles a grey trashcan inside of which is a metal basket attached to a hand crank.  I get to work the hand crank (my neck is somewhat cranky as a result). Our little centrifuge spins the honey out of the comb and it collects in the bottom of the trashcan, I mean, honey spinner.

(I’m not posting a picture of me spinning the honey because (1) John took the picture and it’s blurry and (2) I look like an idiot.)

Darker honey

The honey in some frames was very light and in others quite dark.  The difference in color in these two pictures is not a result of lighting in the room.  The honey in these frames really differed this much in color.  This has to do with whatever flowers the bees were working on at the time.  Last year all of the frames had dark honey.  This time we spun the various colors together.  The result is a lighter honey than we had last year.

Last year’s honey had a deep flavor, like molasses almost.  This honey smells like wild berries.  While we spun the honey, the aroma of wild berries filled the room.  Tasting it, we tried to guess which berries.  There is a hint of wild grape in there.  Hard to say.

Honey dripping into pail

Here the honey is dripping from the spinner into the five-gallon storage bucket.  This bucket has a spout on it for easy transfer into honey jars.  We filled the bucket with about four gallons of honey from the ten frames.

Filtering the honey

We filter our honey.  Some people like raw unfiltered honey, with the bit of wax and pollen still in it.  But it can also have little bee parts in it, too.  I’d just as soon get rid of little bee legs and such.  It looks better when I drizzle it on ice cream.

The filter sits right on the storage bucket.

The four gallons that we spun on Sunday are now sitting for a few days to allow air bubble to rise.  We will skim off the bubbles before putting the honey into jars, currently scheduled for Thursday evening.

And the cappings?  Here they glisten with honey.  We let them drain, and then I will purify the wax so I can use it. But that is another story.

It’s almost honey time

It’s a rainy day and the honeybees are hunkered down in their hives, probably fanning each other like crazy to keep the heat down.  Next week we will be on the beach in Cape May, where John will be hunkered down under the umbrella to keep the sun off.  But when we  get back, it will be honey time!  We have four hives of busy bees this year.  Two of them are getting established, but the other two are lip-smackingly productive.  We’re looking forward to more honey this year than last year. 

All that honey has to go into something, right?  Last year I bought 16 oz. traditional glass honey jars.  I like glass, personally, but some of you prefer plastic squeeze bottles and there’s a certain hobbitlike mom figure who needs her honey in little bear-shaped containers.  So this year, I will offer honey in more than just the glass jars.  If you would like some input on which containers I order, please participate in my little poll!

glass jar

plastic bear

upside down squeeze bottle

plastic