Honey Harvest 2012

Seems that once a year I do something really stupid with the bees and this year's honey harvest was it! I placed the queen excluders on the hives on June 10th in anticipation of a target harvest date of the 4th of July weekend. But our schedules have changed necessitating the need to harvest July 1st - exactly 21 days from the day I placed the excluders on the hive. Ideally, any brood in the honey supers should be hatched by harvest day and 21 days is long enough for the brood to hatch out.

We suited up and pulled the honey supers off the hives - two from OV hive and one from Sasha hive - and placed them on their ends. I've read that an easy way to remove the bees is to use a leaf blower. In reality, using a leaf blower removes some bees but some bees manage to hold on and other crawl/fly right back onto the frames.

So we decided to just brush off the frames, one-by-one and place them in a plastic tub with a lid to keep the bees out until we're ready to extract the honey. It was then I found the frames of brood fro the OV hive. Major crap! Shouldn't it all by hatched on day 21? It's day 21 and there's brood on my frames! Does that mean the queen was in the box? The box that I set on the ground and blew all the bees out of? I don't know because I didn't look! Double crap!!

So we left the box sitting on the grass while we finished harvesting the other frames in the hopes that, if the queen was there she'd either find her way back to the hive or back into that box. About 3 hours later I placed the box back on the hive. I'll inspect in 4 days to see if I can find her, find eggs or find a queen cell.

We harvested 24 frames (10 from Sasha and 14 from OV) and have a 5-gallon bucket full of honey which amounts to about 60 lbs. of honey!

Fingers crossed that hatching in 21 days means the brood hatched the next day and that I did't harm my queen. The OV hive has been my consistent and strong hive so I hope my stupidity doesn't cost me a good queen.

Next year when it's harvest time, I will remove one frame at a time, gently brush off the bees and then place the frame into the plastic tub.