- Hi there, we're gonna talk about harvesting honey.
We like to use a bee escape, there are sometimes called a Quebec bee escape, and to use those
we put them underneath our stacks of honey.
This yard, we're harvesting honey just once at the end of the year.
It's early October now, the second of October, and we're getting to the year's crop off the
hives.
Sometimes, we harvest honey in the middle of the summer, and at the end of the year;
just happen to be doing this at the end of the year this time around.
So, we gotta get all these supers off to be able to get this bee escape underneath them,
and then put all the supers back on again.
It's a lot of effort getting them back off and on.
And so what we do is use this little stand here, and tip the supers back onto the stand,
put our bee escape on, and tip it back on.
The hardest part is right at the beginning: prying this big, heavy stack up.
So, we use a real heavy-duty hive tool, because there's a lot of force there, and a weaker
hive tool will just bend, and not force the boxes up.
We'll get started there.
We make sure we use a good bit of smoke on the hives, 'cause we're banging 'em around
a bit.
Smoke the neighboring hives, as well.
And then it's good to have a second hive tool handy, so you can be able to pry at both sides
of the box at once.
So, we'll just tap that into place, so we can get a good bit of leverage on there, and
then we'll tap the one in on the other side.
And then what we're gonna do, is just pry up and loose the box.
There, it cracked free, and we're ready to tip it.
So, I come around to the back of the hive.
So, we'll just tip it back right onto this stand.
Sometimes, it slides a little bit, but we just ease it down.
There's a tremendous amount of weight there.
But, we just ease that down onto the stand, and then we have full access down to the brood
chamber, and the queen excluder here.
I like to just leave the queen excluder in place when we put on the bee escape.
So, we'll set it on there, and then we can tip the stack back onto it.
We line it up so that it's lined up well, and the corner's gonna hit down right there.
And then we just tip the box forward.
All the way up.
And then forward, there.
As you can see, it's not right in place, but it's a pretty simple matter of using your
hive tool, and a bit of force, to be able to pry that back into position.
Sometimes, we get a few last pries of that, but that's, we've got it back into position,
now.
The only thing left to do is to check and make sure there are no holes where the bees
could get in and rob, when the other bees move down through the bee escape.
So, we use painter's tape to seal up any little holes that might be present there.
We can leave that on for two days.
This time of year, the nights are cooler.
That's partly why those supers stick together so well, 'cause the wax is really kind of
set and is rigid.
But two nights, when the nights are cooler like this, is adequate time to be for the
bees to clear out of those boxes, so we can come back, and take them out and back with
us.
So, that saved a lot of prying, and a lot of lifting, by just tipping it back and putting
it back on.
Now, we're gonna show you what we do with smaller stacks, and what we sometimes do in
the summer to save some effort with handling the boxes.
So, here we have a hive that didn't do quite as well.
I think it was a later split, I can't remember, but it's only got two boxes of honey.
So, each of these weigh as much as 60 pounds each, when they're full.
Just guessing, we'll say they're 50 pounds each.
That's a 100 pounds there, that we're having to handle to take off.
The one that we just tipped over, that's five boxes so that's about 250 pounds that we're
handling in that way.
But, periodically through the summer, we're opening up hives, maybe going down to the
brood chamber.
So, you can use these stands for that purpose, or for harvesting honey in the summer when
they're not so well stuck together.
So, we'll just pry that off.
Straight up, and we just, in this case, just stand the supers off like that.
So, we haven't had to bend down to the ground to set it down, and we're able to just slide
them off and put them there.
This time of year, the wax and propolis are really weld things shut, so it is tough to
be prying them apart, there.
But now, we'll just take a bee escape.
Put it in place.
And again, we're not having to bend over too far, or strain ourselves.
And just slide that over into place.
That is right full, as is this one.
And slide that over.
Put the lid on and we're done.
We'll come back in a couple days to take that honey off there.
So, you can see how handy a little $30 device like this is in harvesting honey.
Thanks very much for watching, see you another time.