Honey harvest!

[oloriel]

Today saw my first (and thus, only) honey harvest of the year - and because it was the only one, I went for it even though the super was only half full.

I think - I haven't weighed the bucket yet because it hasn't actually stopped filling up yet - it may be a bit more than the 5 kg I'd expected; from the looks of it, it's about as much as I got two years ago, but of course I've completely forgotten how much I got then (nursing dementia is real!) Objectively speaking, still not really worth the trouble -- subjectively speaking, YAY HONEY!

And let me tell ya, it really WAS trouble.

But let's begin at the beginning.



As I had inserted a Bienenflucht ("bee escape" - basically, a board with two contraptions that allow the bees to go in only one direction, i.e. out of the super, so when they do their routine change of shift, all of them go out and the new shift don't get in - one of you Anglophone beekeepers tell me what's it called?) a couple of days ago, I could take the super off and inside without having to brush off bees first. Those contraptions come at a little extra cost, but they're definitely worth it - quite reliable (only two bees had somehow missed the change of shift, apparently), saving you a lot of time and hassle and pissed-off bees because you keep brushing them off whilst stealing their honey.

Inside, I had cleaned the kitchen and prepared the tumbler. I really got lucky - an old beekeeper who happens to be an acquaintance of the mom-in-law stopped beekeeping and gave all of his materials to me, including a honey tumbler with an electric motor. Now, with only one colony to harvest this is somewhat ridiculous, but hey, gift horse and all that. Anyway, the tumbler as been in the barn for the past one and a half years, so I first had to clean it from dirt, sawdust and other pleasant things. (This was why this tiny harvest was so much of an effort.) Once assembled, it was using up a lot of space, but oh well, with only four frames to tumble, this would be over soon, right?



Wrong!
But I digress.
So I carried the (satisfyingly heavy) super inside and prepared the frames. You see, when the bees are done working on the honey, they put little wax caps on the honeycomb so it's stored nice and safe. These caps have to be removed in order to get the honey out.
Here you can see the capped honeycomb. The smear on the wood is propolis, an antibiotic resin the bees produce to stick things safely together and keep their hive clean. That is, clean in bee-terms ("looks dirty, but kills bacteria").



I tried a modern technique this time that was suggested in the beekeeping-for-beginners seminar I did back in the day. The idea is that if you don't have brood among the honey (and I don't, since I used a grid to keep the queen out of the super), you can use a hot-air gun to open the caps. The trick is using it just briefly enough to keep the honey from heating - you blow hot air at the cap until the little air pocket underneath expands and blows the cap off. If you heat the honey, it gets a) really runny and b) you kill the enzymes. Heating honey is a big no-no if you don't want to seriously damage the quality. (If you get really cheap honey from the supermarket, it's generally heated because that makes it easier to blend).
The traditional method to use instead is a sort of loooong fork which you use to pry all the caps off. This is labour-intensive and extreeeemely messy (I did it the last time around) - a lot of honey will drip out while you're scratching the wax away, you have to get the caps off the fork, and some wax debris and honey will always stick where you don't want it.
I had not actually expected the hot-air gun method to be this superior, but it was: All the honeycomb was cleanly de-capped in a very short time - with NO DRIPPING HONEY WHATSOEVER. *weeps with joy* Also: no dirty fork; no dirty tray. Miracle of miracles! - Here's a de-capped frame.



With that out of the way, the frames went for a ride on the merry-go-round.



Now, as I mentioned, my tumbler comes with an electric motor. I plugged it in, turned it on, it merrily tumbled... and then stopped. All silently, without smoke or heat, but also without changing its mind again. Motor dead.

Yeah.

I was half-way done: I'd tumbled one side, but not the other.

First idea: Try to turn it by hand. That was actually impossible.

Second idea: Our carpenter's girlfriend I. also has bees. And a honey-tumbler. One of them non-luxury ones with a friggin' manual crank, which really is perfectly sufficient if you only have a single-digit number of colonies and a lot less likely to break down when you last need it, but. You know. Gift horse. (And to be fair, I had the impression that the electric motor is more efficient - it's certainly more powerful.) Anyway, I called I. - nobody answered. Called carpenter - who a) was at home, b) told me that I. was on vacation but c) he would go and see if he found the tumbler (or rather the crank, which after all was all I needed). He d) called back half an hour later that he'd found it.
So I went there to pick it up, got back home - and found out that the mounting bracket was for a smaller tumbler...

Oh well. I managed to get a makeshift solution working - it meant that I had to press with all my impressive weight against the top of the tumbler while instantaneously pulling the mounting bracket towards me and cranking ahead. Joy! Not!
But fortunately, this was only about four frames and one side, so it was manageable. Phew!



Success!
When the honey comes out of the tumbler, it goes through three sieves to filter out any impurities (predominantly wax that fell off during the tumbling. I got a hell of a lot of that two years ago, and almost none this year - let me again praise the hot-air gun! Beekeeper's best friend! Ah, blessed 21st century.). Then the harvest proper is over - but before the honey can be filled into small pots for sale or personal use, it has to be stirred twice a day over the time of several weeks in order to get an homogeneous mixture and to break up the sugar crystals that will otherwise give you really lumpy honey. Only when it takes on a certain texture and mother-of-pearl sheen (I AM NOT SHITTING YOU) is it ready for use.

But that is a different story, to be told another time...



Now all that was left to do for me was putting the emptied frames back on top of the colony (with an empty super in between), for the bees to clean up and repair. We'll see if they know they're supposed to do that, or whether they'll move the entire hive up there or something. (The empty super is supposed to prevent that, but with these bees, I seriously question all those "Bees don't do that" explanations we got...)



Oh right, and in the time I waited for our carpenter to call back, I also harvested our blackberries (1kg of those, and that's without the ones I couldn't reach without a ladder!) and tidied up the hallway. Well, not tidied up, more like re-arranged, but still. Totally accomplished!

What I did not accomplish: Clean up and clear away the tumbler - it only just finished spitting out the last honey. It's 10:30 pm. I think I can be excused if I just leave it standing in the middle of the kitchen for the night. I'll probably curse myself when there are flies all over it tomorrow, but... no more heroics today.

Lyra off!

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/macalla_/]

*NEID* Honig von eigenen Bienen!
Sooo klasse!

Letztens haben wir auch Honig von einem Bauern bekommen aber leider war der nur süß ohne jedes Aroma. Ich nehme mal an, dass da nur Zucker gefüttert worden ist?
Jedenfalls taugt das Zeug höchstens zum Backen als Zucker-Ersatz.

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

Hm, mit den österreichischen Honiggesetzen kenne ich mich natürlich nicht aus, aber hier drüben sind die verdammt streng - Honig aus "nur Zucker" existiert zwar, aber eigentlich nur als Winter- oder Notvorrat, den man den Bienen nicht wegnimmt - und auch gar nicht verkaufen darf, denn als Honig verkauft werden darf nur, was
a) von Bienen via Honigblase
b) aus Nektar oder Blütentau von Pflanzen erzeugt wurde und
c) keine Zusätze (und auch nichts entzogen) hat, weder Zucker noch Aroma.
(Danach gibt es dann noch Regeln zum Wassergehalt, aber das hat dann nur noch mit der Haltbarkeit zu tun - wenn Honig zu nass ist, dann spaltet er sich auf oder fermentiert).
Gibt natürlich - gerade ältere, schlecht ausgebildete - Imker, die vielleicht im Frühjahr auch die Vorratswaben aus dem Winter schleudern, aber das ist seeeehr leichtsinnig, da sie nicht nur ihrem Ruf (und dem aller anderen Hobby-Imker, grrr!) schaden, sondern eben tatsächlich damit auch einen Verstoß gegen's deutsche Lebensmittelgesetz begehen. Wir hoffen mal, dass dein Bauer da klüger war!

Es gibt (muss man fairerweise sagen) natürlich auch "echte" Honige, die leider tatsächlich relativ wenig Aroma haben. Frühtrachthonig (also der aus der ersten Ernte im Juni) ist z.B. m Vergleich zur Sommertracht immer billiger, weil er halt auch weniger gehaltvoll ist. Die meisten Frühjahrsblüten geben zwar jede Menge Nektar (klar, die Bäume wollen ja befruchtet werden!), aber der fällt tatsächlich eher in die Kategorie "Zuckerwasser".
Da dieses Jahr aber die Frühblüher ziemlich spät dran waren, ist dadurch der Anteil an geschmacksarmen "Frühjahrs"honig in der Sommerlese relativ hoch.

Bei uns war zum Glück die Trachtzeit derart bekloppt, dass die Bienen vor lauter Überangebot diverse Frühblüher gar nicht mehr "mitgenommen" haben. So richtige Trachtstärke haben sie erst im Juni erreicht, da war dann schon Honigtau zu haben und den haben sie dann eingefahren. Deswegen scheint mir mein Honig in erster Linie Waldhonig zu sein. Kann man im Labor überprüfen lassen, lohnt sich aber für mich natürlich noch nicht.

Aber joa... im Zweifelsfall taugt schlechter Honig wirklich nur zum Backen.

[http://users.livejournal.com/macalla_/]

Naja, der Honig war sozusagen nicht offiziell gekauft. Der Mann hat keinen Hofladen oder sowas. Bloss eben ein paar Bienenstöcke. Ich hab keine Ahnung, ob der überhaupt irgendwas über Lebensmittelgesetze weiß *G*.

Grundsätzlich sind die Lebensmittelvorschriften hier schon sehr streng. Daher nehm ich an, dass es so ähnlich aussehen wird wie bei euch.

Ich mag ja Honigsorten, die nicht sooo süß sind am Liebsten. Akazienhonig, z.B. verwende ich auch nur zum Süßen. Der hat für meinen Geschmack auch zu wenig Aroma.
Aber ich LIEBE Waldhonig.

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

Wow, a lot of work, but huzzah for the harvest!

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

Yesh! And it turned out to be a lovely dark honeydew honey. (And it's a good thing I took that away from the bees, too, because too much honeydew honey gives them dysentery, which can be lethal during a cold winter. So I actually did them a favour, hah!)

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

*grummelbrummel*

Ja, davon gehe ich auch erstmal aus. Zumal die europäischen Regelungen jetzt auch nicht sooo viel lockerer sind.

Ich liebe Waldhonig auch sehr. Und dass ich den den Bienen weggenommen habe, war sogar eine gute Tat, denn Waldhonig enthält (für die Bienen) auf Dauer zu wenig Eiweiße und kann außerdem Durchfall verursachen, was (im wahrsten Sinne des Wortes) richtig Scheiße ist, wenn die Bienen im Winter zum Kacken nicht ausfliegen können. Irgendwann können sie's dann nicht mehr einhalten und sauen den ganzen Stock ein, dann kriegen's alle und dann krepieren sie. Im Nachhinein dürfte das der Grund sein, warum mein erstes Jungvolk damals eingegangen ist.
Was lernen wir daraus? Veganer töten Bienen! Indirekt! :D

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

Fascinating! I never knew about honeydew honey (http://www.honeytraveler.com/types-of-honey/honeydew-forest-honey/) before - apparently your part of the world is quite famous for it.

So, do you feed your bees over the winter then? My daughter's father has four hives, and apparently they produce enough honey to winter over, but the winter temperature is usually well above freezing, so not so hard on the bees.

I will have to look for honeydew honey locally - what we're famous for here is lavender honey, which is very light; lovely in tea, but apparently the dark honey has more of the healthy properties. Good to know!

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

I offer them artificial nectar (an almost-saturated sugar solution) in autumn; they can either stock up on it or leave it be. Apparently, they prefer "real" nectar to the sugared water, so as long as there are enough harvestable flowers around, they ignore the canister I put in their hive. But if the autumn is very wet, or if there are no more blooms that offer nectar, they empty the canister. I expect they will not need much feeding this year as it's still wonderful flying weather and they can harvest the sedums, goldenrods and impatiens.

I never feed them in winter itself - opening a box when it's cold outside costs them a lot of energy and also makes them twitchy, so it's only done in an emergency. They get to stock up in autumn, which will take them into February at the least. Then I have to decide whether I need to feed them more, or whether they can already harvest the hazels and willows.

I love lavender honey! We don't get it locally, but import some from France, which makes it expensive. But I also love honeydew honey; it's very aromatic without being overwhelming (like chestnut, for instance, is).