We had all six of our hives survive the winter in great shape. Each hive had a great deal of extra honey left over after eating all they needed to keep warm and healthy thru the winter. Russian strain bees are certainly tough bugs! But then we got socked in for virtually all of June...poor ladies could not catch a break in the weather to get out and get harvesting sweet clover. And what few times they could get out between the rains, the clover was washed clean of pollen and nectar so the bees were struggling to find enough to even feed themselves.
By early July, we had hives swarming and we managed to capture 6 of the swarms, but in the end only 4 ended up being viable and able to establish as a successful hive. One we sold to another beekeeper and we estimated it to be a multiple queen "super swarm" since it appeared to be over 12 lbs of bees in the cluster. That hive has already produced 45 lbs of honey this summer for that beekeeper.
But anyway, back to our girls. We now have 10 healthy hives but have been able to harvest only 40 frames of honey between all of them. First photo is not the worlds largest Pop-Tart, but is a frame of capped honey ready for harvest. Each cell is filled with perfect liquid gold at exactly 17% moisture and capped with a thin layer of virgin bees wax.
The first sweet flow of honey from the extractor yesterday!
Straining out the wax cappings from the sweet goodness:
We ended up with about 12 gallons total for the day's harvest. Sounds like a huge amount, but it gets split between four partners. My share then gets broken down into smaller jars and I have quite a Christmas list of family and friends. You would be surprised how fast that 3 gallons disappears!
