Thursday, I got to the school late. My alarm didn’t wake me and it is an hour and a half drive from my home. Anyway, I arrived and got the third period students to help me wash buckets, set up the extracting area, and get the extractor ready to go. By that time the class was over. Not to worry, though. I planned to extract the rest of Thursday and all day Friday. Everyone would get a turn scratching the caps off the honey combs, loading the extractor, and then take turns at turning the crank.

Some of the students were there last year and were disappointed that I didn’t bring the motorized extractor. But they fell into the program and helped some of the new students. Since this is an Ag class, not all of the students were interested in the honey aspect. Some were into Horticulture, Farming, and Animal Husbandry. That meant that over half of the class was milling around and trying to horseplay. I had to call them down several times, but all in all they were a good group of students. We got very sticky and I had to remind them that honey is water soluble and no soap was necessary. While some of them were extracting, I could talk to the others about the properties of honey and other products from the hive. Such as, honey can be used to treat burns, abrasions, and cuts. The honey’s enzymes and the sweat on the body combine and makes a form of Hydrogen Peroxide. That promotes healing and in some instances, will keep scarring down to a bare minimum.

We figured out that two full medium supers would produce about four and half gallons of honey. That is about 55 pounds per bucket. Honey, by the way, weighs 12 lbs per gallon. That first day, the students, with my help at spinning, extracted about 30 lbs.

After school let out, I went to the last of my apiaries that had four hives. Each hive had three supers on them except, one of the colonies was slimed by the Small Hive Beetles. The hive beetle lays her eggs in a honey cell before the bees put nectar in it. When the egg hatches, the larva will eat the honey and poop in it then drills its way through the wax wall to the next cell. Then proceeds to eat and poop. The Small Hive Beetle will lay several eggs in each cell until all the eggs have been expelled from the body. Now just imagine that there are several hundred beetles laying eggs at the same time. You have a very large group of larva working your honey comb at the same time. With that many larva, the top bars of the frames are coated with slime (poop) and that is how you know that you lost your honey. The only thing you can do at this time is take the boxes home and wash out all the honey and beetles, larva, and the brood that is left behind when the bees absconded. Let the comb dry in the sun and wind and use them again next year. The bees will clean the comb before putting anything in the cells.

I lost 3 supers of honey approximately 80 or so lbs. I also lost the bees. We are now looking at about $200-250 added to the approximately $1000 dollars I lost at the second apiary. The cost of neglecting the bees has increased again.

One of the supers I pulled from this apiary was a deep super. I used my leaf blower, that I have renamed my Bee Blower, to blow the bees out of the boxes. The deep was heavy (about 75 to 100 lbs) and I had to carry it about 30 feet to the truck. I have a two man lifter that I use when I have help to move the deeps (honey and brood), but I was alone this time. When I put the deep on the truck, I heard lots of bees in there. I didn’t think too much about it other than I just didn’t blow it good enough.

The school was having a wiener roast that evening so I decided that since I was only about 15 miles away, I would take the honey back to the school so it would be inside.

Friday morning when the first class came in, I decided to extract the deep and get it over with. I pulled two frames, had the students scratch the caps and extract the honey. When I went to the next two frames, I found brood. Now I know why I couldn’t blow the bees out. The nurse bees will stay with the brood almost through a hurricane. They wanted to keep the brood warm. Since there were not enough bees to cover all the brood, I figured that the brood would die soon and went ahead and extracted all the honey I could. The frames with the brood, I left alone. I did not want to get brood bodies in the honey for no reason.

All in all we extracted 10 buckets of honey. Two of them were a full five gallons each. I gave those buckets to the FFA-Ag class for helping me extract my honey and with the 9 gallons of honey from their bees, that set them up to have some money for some of their extra activities. I ended up with five 4 1/2 gallon buckets of honey. Not bad for thinking I didn’t have any at all, but still a far cry from the two barrels that I was shooting for.

Until next time, clean your boxes, replace frames, foundation that is no good, and get ready for the spring flow.