Getting Ready "H Day"

Well "H" day is fast approaching, hopefully weather permitting Saturday is Honey Day.

We are almost ready to extract the honey from the hives and it is so exciting!!

We have gone completely mad and bought ourselves a brand new Honey Extractor, cost = expensive but we thought, we are in for the long haul and we will have to buy one next year anyway so why not buy it now!! so we did.

The weather has not been terrifically good this last month so we made a conscious decision to leave the hives alone, thinking less disruption would equal a bigger honey yield. So we will see, we are hoping for around 100lbs of amber nectar out of 3 hives, fingers crossed.

All 2011 hives are to be left with their stores on in order for them to be strong colonies going into the winter, with the exception of Hive number 9 as this was a prime swarm and has a full super on.

All the Nuc boxes have now been transferred into hives with the exception again of one which is going to be wintered in a polystyrene Nuc box that has a feeder in it and 6 frames, this is a trial to see how they manage. All reports say the Nuc boxes are strong enough to do this so we are having a try.

Come back tomorrow for the "H" day outcome and hopefully I will have photos to show the process.
Why not have guess how much we will extract!!