by Texas Homesteader ~
Last week we talked about Preparing The Hive For Harvest. And in my Beginning Beekeeper’s Series we’ve talked about everything from becoming NewBEES, obtaining your bees, caring for them and more. Links to all of those articles are below for your convenience. But now? Oh now we’re going to take that sweet honey from frame to bottle!
by Texas Homesteader ~
We have several hives in our small apiary. Here in NE Texas, we typically harvest our honey around the first week of July. It’s hot, sticky work that’s for sure. But there’s much more to getting that honey harvest than just strolling out to the hives.
by Texas Homesteader ~
Spring is an exciting time in beekeeping. The bees are finally able to get out of the hive & forage from the blooming plants. The hives grow by leaps and bounds this time of year too. It’s a good time to split the hives to keep them from becoming too crowded.
But spring is also a time when some hives will swarm. Sometimes when we capture a swarm we put the bees into an empty deep hive box with frames and let them get busy. But sometimes so many swarms are caught that we don’t have a deep hive box available. Let’s make some 5-frame nuc boxes for temporary housing for them. They’re super quick to put together & you can build four nuc boxes with a single sheet of plywood!
by Texas Homesteader ~
Y’all know I shun plastic like a banshee, right? I haven’t accepted a plastic shopping bag from the store in years, much preferring my pretty shopping basket anyway. And I refuse to buy over-packaged items too. I’ve learned that recycling isn’t the answer to our landfill problems – PRE-Cycling is! But what is precycling? Well that’s shunning trash from coming into your home in the first place.
But today I’m talking about cling film. You know the stuff, it’s always sticking to itself and hardly ever sticking to the item you’re trying to wrap. Use it once & throw it away. But whaddyagonnado?? Well, I’ve started using beeswax wraps!
by Texas Homesteader ~
RancherMan & I have a small apiary. The bees are fascinating creatures & invaluable in making sure my garden gets pollinated. Plus they offer up that sweet delight during our summer honey harvest as well. Around our area of NE Texas the honey harvest is usually done the first week in July.
But we don’t simply decap the honeycomb to get to the honey. We go ahead & scrape the frames down. We extract the honey and then turn our attention to that gorgeous natural beeswax!
by Texas Homesteader ~
Around the end of March RancherMan & I start thinking about splitting our beehives. Splitting a hive accomplishes 2 things – it expands the number of hives in your apiary. (yea!) But it also gives the bees a little elbow room by putting empty frames in each hive allowing for expansion.
You see, if the bees get to thinking things are too cramped, they’ll swarm looking for more space. And that’s something no beekeeper wants since there’s been lots of time & effort into managing their apiary. We did our splits by swapping empty frames for full ones. it was easy!
~by Texas Homesteader ~
Sunflowers & honeybees – Two of my favorite things in one shot!
~TxH~
by Texas Homesteader ~
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Busy as a bee! Our hives have increased this year thanks to us performing splits and capturing swarms. All our bees are busy, busy, busy these days! During the spring when everything was abloom they had all they could harvest. Those girls were coming & going from the hives with pollen pockets full!
But now that the heat of our NE Texas season is starting to set in the blooms are not quite as prolific. Oh there are still wildflowers blooming, and the bees are all having a hayday in my garden alright. But with the fading blooms and the fact that we’re trying to boost some of those smaller swarm hives, RancherMan & I decided perhaps we need to give them a little feed. There are many ways to accomplish this, here’s what we do:
by Texas Homesteader ~
RancherMan & I are still New-BEES! Our apiary started out with two established single-deep beehives back in May of last year. That first beehive stand was built using repurposed 2″x6″ boards that were 6-ft long from raised beds that we tore out. We added a deep box to each hive last year & saw those bees safely through the winter.
This spring we split them into four hives. Now we needed another hive stand so we built another like the first from purchased 2″x6″ boards. Then we caught not one, not two, but FOUR bee swarms this spring! (I KNOW, how exciting!!)
But these swarms are being caught & brought to our fledgling apiary faster than we can build stands. RancherMan decided to change direction. He wanted to build the next stands using concrete cinder blocks and 4″x4″ 5-ft long wood posts.
by Texas Homesteader ~
Y’all know we bought our very first bees last year & it’s been a blast raising these girls. But there’s typically no honey harvest that first year as they’re getting established. The honey they make during that first year needs to remain with the hive to see them through the winter. We overwintered our bees and they came through this spring with flying colors!
So we split the hives about 8 weeks ago. Bibbidy-bobbedy-boo our 2 hives turned into 4! After the split we allowed the hives to recover a bit before we inspected them again. The hives without a queen raised a new queen to take her place, the hives that retained their queen kept on with business as usual. Our inspection today showed that now we’re ready to add a honey super to the two stronger hives.
