Here is the latest. We harvested our honey. Video starts with shaking the bees off of the frames, to cutting off the wax cappings, to spinning in the extractor and filtering out the
"bee parts", to filling the jars, to watching bees clean residual off the harvested frames and wax (that may be the coolest part of the video about at the 15 minute to 18 minute mark), to solar melting the wax into a wax cake (surprised me how much whiter the finished product wax was than the last time I did it). A to Z honey harvest.

FYI - a strong colony in a good year can create 100 lbs of honey. Many times your first year you don't get any honey, but this was a great honey year locally, so 49 pounds isn't great for two new colonies, but it made us pretty happy.

As this beekeeping season ends, I have to say that the thing I have the most fun with is catching swarms, but I think my wife liked the honey harvest the best. EVERYONE wanted local honey - we didn't have enough to sell. I plan on doing more swarm catching next year and posting videos. Here is the link to the honey harvest:


Watch this video on YouTube


The task at hand now is to make sure they are strong enough to survive the winter...time to get them ready.