Extraction and Check 11/9

Rachel and I went to Twickenham beekeepers on Sunday to extract our honey from the frames. We started off by scraping the surface of the sealed cells to release the honey, it will not drip from the cells under gravity once it reaches a certain viscosity. We then put the frames in the centrifuge at a low speed to start but as the sound changed to a higher pitch we put it up full revs to spin out as much as we could. Once all the frames were spun we opened the tap at the bottom and out poured the honey into an awaiting honey bucket. We were very sticky at the end, fingers were licked!
 
 At this stage its still got a lot of wax scrapings in it but we'll sieve that later this week. We then leave it to settle for a couple of days to allow the tiny air bubbles to rise to the top. It doesn't spoil the honey but makes it cloudy and not so visually appealing. I hope to bottle at the weekend so Ill update on Monday how many jars we get.


I did the check today on my own but there wasn't much to do and as it was a tad cool I just renewed the Apiguard varroa treatment, topped up the syrup and more importantly gave the extracted frames back to the bees to lick and repair. It caused a bit of a frenzy as the bees all wanted to pile into the hive. The varroa treatment on the old hive certainly picked up this week with an even more astonishing drop than last week. No sign of the hornet this week, lets hope its been picked off by a (very brave) bird