First honey pull tomorrow - Today update

I don’t understand anything about it, But find it interesting.

Well, teachable moment then. I'm no expert, but:

You've seen beehives, usually white wooden boxes. Normally there are 2 or 3 boxes stacked up. Bees enter from the bottom. The boxes each have 10 removable rectangular frames hanging in them. Bees build honeycomb on those frames. Queen generally lays eggs in the comb in the bottom box (brood box) and the workers raise the babies there. The workers generally make and store honey in the top box. When the all the frames in the top box are full of honey, you take some out, replace with new frames and pull the honey from the frames you took. That's the honey you eat.

Nuc - is short for "nucleus". It's basically a small bee colony you buy or take from another hive. Each box has 10 frames in it, a "nuc" is 5 frames which have honey, pollen, eggs, about 10,000 bees, and a Queen. You put that nuc into a hive box, add 5 more new frames to get to 10, and hope the population keeps growing and they start building comb and making honey.

Super - the box that goes on top of the bottom brood box. This is where the bees make and store honey.

Pull - you spin the frames in a device and centrifugal (sp?) force pulls the honey out of the comb, flings it against the inside of the container, it drains to the bottom.

Sorry for the length (ha! never said that before).

I helped a few weeks ago on getting honey. Was interesting. Even took a weekend trip to marshal Texas to pick up a big spinning machine. Learned a lot that weekend about bees and honey. Was pretty neat

Awesome. I am adding a second deep brude box tomorrow. I bought my nuc 2 weeks ago.

In North Alabama, the early harvest is called Tupelo Honey, because it comes mostly from The Tupelo Tree Blooms, but some call it wildflower honey. Then the second harvest is called Cotton Honey, because it comes from cotton blooms. That was told to me by a friend who runs a large operation.
Do they call it the same thing in your part of the country?

We just pulled all our wildflower honey this week and spun it today. Over here in Georgia it was a lean year. The gallberry and privet didn't produce hardly anything. Our wildflower year is over for us (time to feed them). We'll be moving 40-50 hives over to cotton now but it's easy to lose them due to farmers spraying and the honey granulates too fast for most people to want it. We make creamed honey with our cotton honey.

Tips: Look for a cheap 2 frame hand extractor. Go through your super and pull everything that is capped and doesn't have brood (if you don't use a queen excluder). Shake the bees off each stick and put it in another empty super box and put a lid on it each time to keep them from robbing and getting trapped. If you aren't going to spin it right away, you will need to bag it up to keep the pests off it. You could also stick it in the freezer to keep the wax moths and beetles off it. If you don't they will ruin your honey in a few days and that's not fun. Make sure if they aren't bringing in nectar (look for sloshing frames) that you give them some sugar water or whatever you want to feed them with (we use corn syrup). Use lots of smoke.

Good luck. We run around 120 hives as a side hobby/business. If you need some help feel free to let me know.

Today would be a great day for harvest. This was my 2nd full year. Didn’t get honey last year, but harvested 180lbs over the past couple weeks. I use honey bandit with a fume board (makes things much easier. I highly recommend the Maxant wax cap planer. Congrats on a first year harvest! Now go kill those mites and get ready for the Fall flow.

looks great, thanks!

Update - used filet knife, decapped them over a bucket. Used a 2 frame extractor, spun them out, put them on rack in yard for bees to clean up. Drained extractor through cheesecloth into bucket, drained de-capping bucket through cheesecloth into bucket. Put cap residue on table in yard for bees to clean up. Took 1:45 start through clean up.

Ended up with 3 1/2 gallons of honey from 7 frames. Will bottle tonight.

I shoulda started this years ago.

And how much does it cost to get started?