Honey harvest

I have been meaning to post these pictures for a while, but haven’t had the time until now. Do you know what this is?

It’s honey harvesting at Buzz and Fuzz! Honey harvesting is definitely my favorite fall chore. Of course I didn’t think to take pictures of the process until the last step. Hopefully I’ll remember that next year.

A quick and brief summary of the honey harvesting process:
1. Remove the honey supers from the hives.
2. Cut the caps off the top of the honey comb.
3. Spin the honeycomb/frames in an extractor.
4. Strain the honey, bottle, and enjoy.

In my humble opinion, there is no honey as sweet as the honey from a backyard beehive!

Ughh...

This is my third summer tending bees. I only have two hives and would love to expand my apiary when I feel I can properly manage the two hives I have. This year I have loosely followed Cornell’s beekeeping schedule and have felt like I have a good handle on things. Until today…

One of my hives swarmed. Ughh. I have no idea why they felt the need to leave the hive. To make matters worse, I prepared to catch the swarm, but the girls decided to take off before Eric (DH) got home to help. Time from swarm to new location was only 3 hours. I didn’t get any pictures of this swarm, but here’s some pictures from last year:

Please click for a larger image (and the full effect)…

We attempted to catch that swarm as well, but the queen flew away in the process and the others followed shortly after.

Going... going... gone.
It is instinct for bees to swarm as a means of reproduction. When a hive swarms, the queen and a large percentage of the worker bees leave to find a new hive. The original hive is left to raise a new queen (and replace all of the workers it lost).