The Honey Harvest Begins!

I had an extra deep super so to get the honey filled frames from the hives I decided to use the method I learned at the Folk School . We took one frame of honey at a time, brushed and shook off the bees and placed the frame in an empty super.

I also wanted to create space that was bee-free so I set the empty super on a single bed sheet, and prepared to gather up the frames.

I opened the Destin hive and selected the super that appeared to have the most frames completely filled with honey and capped. I lifted out a frame, stood at the front of the hive, as recommended in Hive Management by Richard Bonney, and shook the bees off of the frame. The bees who remained I brushed off gently with my bee brush.

[Bad news: I also brushed off a ton of hive beetles and squashed as many as I could. Destin had many more small hive beetles than Bermuda.]



When the frame was free of bees I placed it in the empty super.


I quickly covered the whole project with the other end of the sheet. When 10 frames were in the previously empty super, I grabbed the hand holds through the sheet and carried the whole thing in and set it on my kitchen counter.

I came back out and did the same procedure with the Bermuda hive.

One great advantage of this is that in each hive at the edge of the super there was one frame that wasn't completely ready. I was able to substitute a full frame from the super below that was ready.