OK, finally got off my duff today and went out to harvest honey. I figured I'd do the powdered sugar dust at the same time after I took the frames out of the honey super. WRONG!
OK, so I got the smoker fired up and tried to lift the outer cover... Glued down TIGHT! Had to pry it open so jostled everyone before I even got started... Then again when removing the inner cover... OK, so that done, there were a LOT of bees in the frames and underside of the inner cover. I had to puff a LOT of smoke in the hive as well as around myself as the bees were NOT happy! The first frame was pretty much empty so i set that in the hanger to make room to pull the others.
OK, so lessons learned;
#1 Get a fume board and USE IT! The smoke brought the bees up into the super to eat honey... NOT the ideal when you're trying to get the bees OUT of the super...
#2 Do NOT use a swifer duster to remove the bees from the removed honey frames... they stick to it... like dust, (and spilled honey) but better! They definitely do NOT like it! (Who knew right?)
#3 Do NOT go bare handed when stealing their honey! Got hit 3 times, all on the left hand (which was holding the frame at the top center.) Have a little minor swelling by the last one, right on the index finger knuckle. Hope this helps the arthritis there... Took a couple of Benedryl, just in case.
#4 Make sure if using the smoker, that there's enough fuel to last the entire evolution. Sucks if you run out before you go back out to open the hive and put the scraped clean frames back in for Bee cleaning. They remember you from 10 minutes earlier. They are still decidedly UN-happy!
#5 do NOT even THINK about doing the powdered sugar thing when stealing honey... plan on stealing the honey and making a hasty get-away! The bees are pissed, and there's leaking honey all over the place that the sugar will stick to and make a mess.
#6 Propolis gets stuck to EVERY thing! Propolis is hard to remove once on something (like laundry basket handles).
#7 A full frame of honey is HEAVY! A full medium honey super is up to10 times as heavy! I left the box on the hive and put the frames into a laundry basket to carry to the house. I had 6 full and two 1/2 frames (1 side full, the other sides were 1/2 uncapped, so only scraped the capped honey and left the rest for the bees.) Only had one un-drawn frame in the super!
Altogether a rather good start since this is my first year. I had been told to not expect any honey or maybe just a little. That pot 1/2 full weighed out at 26.2 pounds (wax & honey combined)! If there's 6 pounds of wax there, that leaves me with 20 pounds of honey! I'm very happy with those results! I just wish I had been more of a bee keeper and less of a "bee haver" The other hive might have survived and I'd have twice this amount.
There is still a lot of alfalfa blooming around here so they can still collect more nectar/pollen to stock up before the first hard frost/freeze. I'll go back and remove the super in a week or so, hopefully dust with powdered sugar, remove the honey super frames, in there and start feeding them 2:1 sugar water so they can fill voids. After the first hard freeze, I'll swap over to just plain sugar for the winter.
What an experience!
OK, so I got the smoker fired up and tried to lift the outer cover... Glued down TIGHT! Had to pry it open so jostled everyone before I even got started... Then again when removing the inner cover... OK, so that done, there were a LOT of bees in the frames and underside of the inner cover. I had to puff a LOT of smoke in the hive as well as around myself as the bees were NOT happy! The first frame was pretty much empty so i set that in the hanger to make room to pull the others.
OK, so lessons learned;
#1 Get a fume board and USE IT! The smoke brought the bees up into the super to eat honey... NOT the ideal when you're trying to get the bees OUT of the super...
#2 Do NOT use a swifer duster to remove the bees from the removed honey frames... they stick to it... like dust, (and spilled honey) but better! They definitely do NOT like it! (Who knew right?)
#3 Do NOT go bare handed when stealing their honey! Got hit 3 times, all on the left hand (which was holding the frame at the top center.) Have a little minor swelling by the last one, right on the index finger knuckle. Hope this helps the arthritis there... Took a couple of Benedryl, just in case.
#4 Make sure if using the smoker, that there's enough fuel to last the entire evolution. Sucks if you run out before you go back out to open the hive and put the scraped clean frames back in for Bee cleaning. They remember you from 10 minutes earlier. They are still decidedly UN-happy!
#5 do NOT even THINK about doing the powdered sugar thing when stealing honey... plan on stealing the honey and making a hasty get-away! The bees are pissed, and there's leaking honey all over the place that the sugar will stick to and make a mess.
#6 Propolis gets stuck to EVERY thing! Propolis is hard to remove once on something (like laundry basket handles).
#7 A full frame of honey is HEAVY! A full medium honey super is up to10 times as heavy! I left the box on the hive and put the frames into a laundry basket to carry to the house. I had 6 full and two 1/2 frames (1 side full, the other sides were 1/2 uncapped, so only scraped the capped honey and left the rest for the bees.) Only had one un-drawn frame in the super!
Altogether a rather good start since this is my first year. I had been told to not expect any honey or maybe just a little. That pot 1/2 full weighed out at 26.2 pounds (wax & honey combined)! If there's 6 pounds of wax there, that leaves me with 20 pounds of honey! I'm very happy with those results! I just wish I had been more of a bee keeper and less of a "bee haver" The other hive might have survived and I'd have twice this amount.
There is still a lot of alfalfa blooming around here so they can still collect more nectar/pollen to stock up before the first hard frost/freeze. I'll go back and remove the super in a week or so, hopefully dust with powdered sugar, remove the honey super frames, in there and start feeding them 2:1 sugar water so they can fill voids. After the first hard freeze, I'll swap over to just plain sugar for the winter.
What an experience!
Hope you had your veil on!
I like rubber dish gloves, I can feel everything, but I "feel" protected. (even though I'm probably not) It still scares me when I grab a frame and feel a buzzing under my finger. Dish gloves are better than dropping a frame of bees!
I can only imagine how ticked off the bees were! I can tell you from first hand experience that they don't like being tangled in hair either.
I had on a 3/4 suit and the veil, just no gloves. I guess from here on out I'm going to need the gloves too. My left hand is pretty swollen right now and I've never had this kind of reaction to a sting... Of the 3 stings, only one has caused the issue. I wonder if different bees within a colony carry slightly different poisons in their stings... two of the 3 I barely even felt, but the 3rd one was kick butt! Hope I'm not (becoming) allergic 
but cool about getting honey 
With a little luck, you won't have to do anything else. A swarm will find it and move in and viola! you're an up & coming bee keeper! After that, it's really pretty low maintenance! I'll re-set up the other Lang hive I have next spring, but think I'm, going to do a TBH next time I expand.
No comparison to store bought... so much better! The left hand is swollen pretty good today. Like a blown up rubber glove. The swelling extends a couple of inches past the wrist. Hopefully it will start to go down later today. Yeah... I know, those little birdies warned me. Will heed the warning from here on out.
