So I have my smoker and hive tool. I usually have a rock on top of the hive that just holds the
lid down. We'd hate for the lid to leave during cold weather. I mentioned that any
time above 50 degrees... if you're going to check hive when it's 50 degrees you want to make a
very brief inspection. You will find out what you need to find out and get the
hive closed back up. More preferably low wind, sunny day, in the sixties, seventies,
eighties. That's better for the hive inspection. This is a strong colony. It's got two deeps, a medium,
a couple supers full honey up here. It's ready for honey harvest, but we're going to look
through here and show you some of the components of the hive. I may smoke a
little at the entrance around here,
smoke a little under the bottom if I have a screen bottom board. That kind of lets the bees know I'm coming and I use
the tool to pry the lid. If you get a crack like that, it's good to pause for a moment. Give it a pause and
let those bees adjust to that loud snap you just made and then with my smoker in hand,
I raise the lid, put a little smoke under that lid and let those bees have a
few seconds to adjust to that and for that smoke to begin working.
When I take the lid off I like to have have room to place that, at least one
hives width beside the hive. I place that lid, or telescoping top upside down.
Now when I take a super off, this is one of our supers, I have somewhere to place
it. So that's really important. This hive has a ventilated inner cover for the heat of summer. Ventilated
meaning screened so the bees can get a lot of airflow through the hive.
So I'm moving carefully and deliberately. There's a lot of bees on this screened inner cover. So my
technique so that when I place that back, I don't crush bees is I take that to
the front of the hive and just give it a shake, and those bees will move back in. Now I can place this out of my way.
And I noted on this that this one's full so I know that this is going to be a heavy super, so think about your lifting position. I use my hive tool
to pry these
supers loose and you know, use proper lifting techniques. These
boxes can be really heavy when they're full of honey. They'll definitely hurt you. At this height, I don't know if there
is a proper lifting technique. Bend the knees. So that's got about
fifty pounds of honey in it... pretty heavy, massive population of bees in this hive.
You can see all the bees here on these honey frames. Typically, I don't have a need to
inspect a honey frame. What we do is we have a brood chamber here. This is not
exactly a typical set up - a brood chamber, and a medium, then another brood chamber. You
have a queen excluder here. Queen excluder
is a metal grid that keeps her from making it into our honey supers. That way
we only have honey in these boxes and don't have to worry about brood.
Personally that helps me out when I'm harvesting honey. I don't have to worry
about brood or larvae in the honey. Who wants high protein honey? Delicacy in some
countries but around here we tend to go for the straight honey. So I don't have to worry
about my Queen being in this box because of the excluders. If I want to really
inspect what's going on the brood nest and show you some brood, worker bees,
drones, and possibly the queen, we're going to need to remove the honey supers first.
So I'm careful not to damage my wooden ware anymore then possible as I pry this loose. Work from the corners.
There's a rim of propolis right there. Propolis is what bees gather from plants. It's a resinous substance that's got
antibacterial, antifungal properties. It's got a really nice, spicy smell. There's some propolis here on the
tops of the frames - sticky, gummy resin. There's actually some research, ongoing
research in various types of cancer. They're finding that it shrinks tumors in various
types of cancer and they've even been treating basal cells and melanomas with
propolis. A little twisting motion. So as I
place this, I'm careful to, as heavy as it is... you can only be so careful, but I'm
careful to set it in place and twist and not crush a lot of bees on the surface of
the box - on the surface here. Here you can see a lot of propolis. There's a rim of propolis
around the top edge of the hive. So if I just want to collect a little for my use,
I can take the freshest stuff right off the top. It's a good reason not to paint this
top edge of your box if you're going to collect propolis, because you don't want paint in what your
harvesting so there's you know if you did that several times through the
course of the season, you'd end up with quite a bit of propolis. You can make tincture with it.
It's good for tooth and gum issues. You can make a throat gargle. It's really good for a sore throat but if
you're really going to harvest it on any scale there is actually a propolis trap.
It's a grid that you place on the hive. You lift the lid a little so that light
comes in and the bees want to shut that light out and they'll propolize that grid and
you can harvest the propolis off the grid. If you're stung, it's really important
as a bee leaves its stinger, it becomes disemboweled and eventually dies because
that stinger's barbed. This is predominantly with mammals which are
probably the worst predators for bees. If you need to remove a stinger, use your hive tool
like this, or the back of your fingernail to flick the stinger out.
There's still a muscle pumping poison from the venom gland into your body and if
you pinch and grab at that stinger like this, you're basically just pushing down
the syringe and giving yourself the full dose. So it's important to remove it with
the flicking motion of the fingernail or the hive tool, instead of a pinching motion.
The swifter you remove a stinger, the less reaction you'll have too because less
venom is getting pumped into your system.
So let's show you what a nice capped frame of honey looks like out of one of these supers here.
These supers are full of bees. These bees are being very receptive. If they
were aggressive, I wouldn't be able to move my hand over the hive like that but
notice I'm not making quick, jerky movements...very slow, deliberate. So I can pry a little
with the hive tool here and loosen this frame up and
this tool has a bend in it that allows you to lift a frame by prying on the frame next to it.
When you lift a frame, you want to come straight up, slowly and
deliberately so as not to crush a lot of bees. This is a beautiful frame of capped honey.
This is predominantly lindon or basswood honey and I know that just because of
the timing of when these bees were making this crop. When you're harvesting honey
you want to find honey that's predominantly capped. Bees gather nectars that are
anywhere from 30 to 90 percent water and for it to ripen into honey and become
stable to where it won't ferment, it needs to be between, below 18.6% moisture. So
they fan their wings over this while it's in open cells until they get it
down to 18.6 or less and then they put this this wax capping over it. If I remove
that capping you can see the liquid honey inside and that's ripe honey. So the
general rule is as long as the honey is about seventy - eighty percent capped, if
there's a little uncapped around the edges, your moisture content is probably fine. If you're
in a really humid wet tropical type of environment or the deep south on a
rainy year, even capped honey sometimes can be right on the verge. So you don't want
to harvest a crop and have it
ferment. Now you can intentionally ferment honey and make a really nice drink
called mead but you don't want to do it unintentionally. So the best way for
insurance is to use a refractometer. It's an instrument you can use to test the
moisture content of honey and then you're sure of the moisture content but once it's at
18.6 and it's sealed, honey will last for thousands of years. So when I replace
this frame, I'll replace it in the same direction.
That way you can get a better view. There's bees on it. I'm
careful not to bump it into the end walls this way and this way. Drop it down nice
and easy. If you're slow, the bees have time to move out of the way. And there we go. I don't think we crushed a
single bee there. So it's all about handling. So let's get down to where
there's some business and we'll try to find some brood down here and show you maybe you
some drones and queen.