Our hive after we extracted
We did it!
Today was a day that most definitely a day to find something positive to do. That, for us, meant extracting our first every batch of honey.
We were all kinds of nervous but it really worked out swimmingly. I’ll save words for later but I’ll post the photos I took as we worked.
Jill is ready for action in her coveralls.
One of the fuller frames
This is my attempt at not looking creepy. Also note: this is my late grandfather’s old apron.
Jill holding a lighter (read: more typical) frame.
Me testing the manual extractor
Jill making one of the first passes at uncapping. (We started on less-full frames in case we screwed up)
Now Steph…
We accidentally pulled a frame that had fresh larvae. Oops. We gave it back, don’t worry.
This is me running the manual extractor
Me uncapping
Uncapping detail
Jill working that extractor. Hard. (It was really wobbly and took a lot of bracing)
Steph mid-photo-taking while Jill was doing something else awesome.
Uncapped wax draining its honey (that we later added to the bucket).
This is sadly about as high as our honey level got. To be fair it was was a giant, 55-gallon drum we were extracting into.
After we’d gotten every drop we could, we set out our tools for the bees to clean up. Cap box, extractor. Pretty much everything. A few hours later, they had seriously knocked everything out. Amazing.
Same shot as at the top..but this is our hive as configured for winter. The super (box) on the far side is additional frames we needed to take off but didn’t feel comfortable extracting (due to un-finished honey). We put it out there for them to reclaim everything)
