Honeybees

Honey Harvests

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  • Red Pollen
  • Spring Forager on Wild Cherry
  • Honey Frame

Beekeeping is about 98% fulfilling and 2%… well… not-so-much.

2% are those 100 degree days when it’s your ONLY day off and you have to inspect or harvest because it may be another week or a month until you have another chance. Soak a bandana for your neck & have all your tools ready before suiting up. Have plenty of drinking water nearby and like most things in life, once you get started and you find that because you’re amongst your beloved honey bees, it’s really not so bad.

Tim & I have developed a system that works well for us. He usually pulls the frames and brushes off most of the bees. I take the frame and finish clearing the bees and then put the frames into an empty super and cover it with a cloth. The empty super is on the back of the truck so the height is comfortable for me. Once that super is full, I can push it back & start filling another, stacking the boxes as needed. We do all this methodically until we’ve gone through each hive. Once we’ve closed the hives back up, we can drive the truck to the extracting room where they can sit until we are ready to extract.

TIP: Always check your partner’s back for any stowaway bees before entering the house!

TOOLS: The tools we use for extracting are pretty simple… maybe even primitive. 1. A large tote with a thin board attached and across the top edge with a screw facing up driven through the center of it. The screw is for resting a honey frame on while removing the wax capping. 2. A very long thin knife for skimming off the wax. An uncapping scratcher, (this can be a fork). 3. Empty bee boxes (with an inverted lid underneath to catch drips), to put the extracted frames back into.4. The extractor; ours is a hand crank, two-frame extractor that our generous kids gave to us for Christmas. Prior to that, we borrowed our local club extractor and prior to that was a home-made bucket extractor that required an electric drill to spin. 5. Lots of clean lint-free dish cloths, and washing water. 5. Rubber gloves. 6. A strainer. 7. Empty food grade buckets with lids. 8. A refractometer to measure the moisture content in the honey. You want it to read below 18% so there’s no potential for fermentation.

Once the honey has been extracted from the super frames, we take those frames away from any high foot-traffic areas and leave them for the bees to clean. They will clean every drop of honey from the frames as well as from the extractor or anything else that may have gotten sticky honey on. This makes the bees very happy for a few days.

We usually strain the majority of wax chunks and debris before letting the honey rest and settle before we bottle it. We call it lightly filtered as it may still have bee debris, wax and pollen. It’s certainly All-Natural and that is what our customers expect.

Last, but not least (for now), I save a sample bottle each time we extract and through the years have a collection of all the varieties that our Beeautiful Friends Hill Apiary Honey Bees have produced! The bottles are SO pretty!

Valentines Day 2020

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We’re hoping this is the last week of bitter cold, that we have to worry about. How are the bees surviving through this winter? We’ve had so many warm days and the bees were able to get out and about and then it turns around and dips down below 0 degrees. Do they still have any honey stores, and are they able to get back into a warm cluster? We know the days are getting longer but we’re still feeling a little anxious for Springtime and for those longer sunny days.

Bitter Cold February 2020

Beautiful Beloved Beeswax

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Beeswax is a highly desirable natural substance that can only be produced by honey bees. It is the young honeybees that are between the age of 12-20 days old who are able to make it. Young honey bees have 8 mirroring glands on either side of their abdomens from which the beeswax is secreted in sheets. The honey bees remove those sheets of wax and work them into a pliable medium which is then used for building Queen cells, brood rearing cells as well as food storage cells. The nurse bees also cover the developing brood with beeswax to finish their metamorphosis. Honey also gets a wax capping once all of the water content is evaporated from the nectar and it becomes “honey”. The wax capping protects the honey from pathogens and fermentation. Repairs around the hive are also made with beeswax.

Beeswax shrinks approximately 9.6% as it changes from liquid to solid.

Wax Bloom is a term that is often questioned. It is a whitish coating that appears on solid blocks of beeswax and candles. It is not harmful and will not retard the performance of a candle or other products. Bloom is thought to be caused by molecules rearranging causing the “bloom” to come to the surface. Sometimes it will increase over time and makes a product look frosted. Candle consumers often find the bloom desirable during the winter holidays especially, as it adds to the frosty-like season. Wax bloom can be removed easily by gently rubbing with a soft cloth, warming slightly with a blow dryer or spritzing with a little rubbing alcohol.

Beeswax Candles : Hypo-allergenic, non-toxic, clean burning, lead free, naturally scented, virtually dripless, long burn time, removes harmful airborne particles from the air…

Remove all labels before lighting. Always use a proper heat-proof holder for candles before lighting. Never leave a burning candle un-attended. Keep out of reach of children and pets. Keep away from flammable materials. Burn in draft-free areas. Extinguish before leaving the room. Not recommended for inside hurricane-style or other high-wall glass.

For skin care products, beeswax is a very much desired ingredient. It has been told that somewhere near 2000 years ago a Greek Physician, Galen was the first to use Beeswax in a cleansing cold cream. It is preferred in skin care product because it doesn’t go rancid, nor does it irritate most skin types. It adds protection and as a humectant, it seals in moisture and yet still allows skin to breathe. It’s been used for reducing inflammation and as an emollient. It has been said to carry antiviral & antibacterial properties and with all of that, it smells wonderful too!