We took the honey off the Belle hive on the weekend! I had a couple of friends come over to help - a big thanks to both of them, as it turned out to be a bigger job than I expected.
We first had to brush the bees off each frame that contained capped honey. These frames are heavy, the bees do not want to leave, and we only had one bee brush. It took much longer than we thought it would. I was pulling frames out of the hive, passing them to one friend to brush the bees off, then she passed the frame of to my other friend over the fence, who put them in my kitchen. When we were done, I had 11 frames of honey to extract. There were bees flying all over the yard, trying to get into my kitchen to find their honey!
I set the extractor up in the middle of my kitchen. It was a two frame extractor that was spun by hand. Again, one friend took the cappings off, another friend took pictures, and I spun the extractor. The neighbors from next door came over to watch for a while - it was hot and stuffy, as we had to keep the door and windows closed to keep the bees out. However, a couple of tiring hours later, I had about 40 pounds of honey.
I spent the next couple of evenings straining the honey and putting it into jars. We are still working on the labels, but my plan is to label the large and medium size jars and sell them. I'll keep the small jars to give away as Christmas gifts, and have kept a couple of kgs for myself and the neighbors.
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