Pages for Bee Information

Saturday, August 19, 2006

Chunk Honey - Phase Two



The crushed honey sat on the edge of my garden for several hours and most of the honey strained through the filter by then. I took the bucket in to my kitchen and began filling the wide-mouthed jars filled with honeycomb.

I had 22 jars and just enough honey to fill all of them - which says to me that to do chunk honey, I'll always need to allot about half of the frames to crush and strain to provide the honey to fill the jars.

So at the end of the day of honey bottling, I have:

1. From Bermuda, all done in crush and strain, I emptied one 10 frame shallow super and got about 21 pounds of bottled honey.

2. From Destin, I emptied one 10 frame shallow super and made 22 pint jars of chunk honey, including comb and filler honey.


Posted by Picasa








3. I also ended up with 2 gallon ziploc bags filled with washed wax cappings and crushed comb


At the end of the honey bottling day, I put the empty frames, each with honey dripping from them, back on the hive from which they came. I put the frames in Bermuda back in the empty super below the inner cover. I put the frames in Destin above the inner cover, as suggested in Hive Management.

I'm not sure that was a good idea in that there has been a frenzy of bee activity around the super in Destin with the honey dripping from the frames - I'm not sure if robbing from Bermuda is happening or what.

I left the wax from the chunk honey in the filter over the 5 gallon bucket to continue to filter overnight. Whew!!!! What a day!

Bermuda still has three honey supers on the hive - one is pretty empty; one has honey and brood and is closest to the brood boxes, so I'll leave it on the hive for the bees; one more is full and capped. So I still have at least one super to harvest from that hive.

Destin still has two honey supers on the hive. One is pretty empty and the other is full of beautifully capped honey. I will harvest at least that one super from the Destin hive in a week or two.

No comments:

Post a Comment