(1) How do you know that there is blackberry honey in there? Is it distinctive?
We have tons of wild blackberries on my property (and in the area). They are about done with the bloom. Yes, it is distinctive. Unfortunately, there's so much more going on during the flow, that it's all combined, but I can still taste the blackberry in the honey.
How did you harvest the honey?
I have an extractor.
Did you use a triangle escape, a blower, a chemical or another method.
A combination of some of the above. I initially use honey robber and fume board. I keep it on for a short amount of time (about 5 minutes), just long enough to force the majority of the bees into the lower chambers that I won't be pulling from. After that, I put the inner cover underneath the boxes to be taken and put a bee escape in the oval hole. I then leave them alone until the next day. When the next day comes, most of the bees will be in the part of the hive which won't be extracted. I'll take the boxes off, load them into my jeep and haul them to the house. Before I go into the house, I inspect each frame for stragglers (my wife doesn't want my female honey makers in the house ;) ).
Once I get a bunch more hives, I'll probably use a blower, but I want to know more of the effects on using that method. I.E., will the bees be so disoriented that they will go into whatever hive they can get to first, or no effects, or go back into their own hive. I expect no effects, but I want to be sure. Besides that...I bet they are a lot more prone to stinging.
Why now for the harvest? Do you take honey frame by frame or super by super? The books do not seem to give me a good idea on when to harvest.
This was my second harvest of the year actually. I try to collect distinct types of honey. The last flow was heavy with dandelion. The honey was obviously dandelion. Tasted like dandelion, bright yellow like dandelion. It was the best honey I've had this year, IMO. Another reason for my timing is, I just don't have that many honey supers built up (I'm working on that...well...my girls are). This particular time my boxes were completely full. Clover is starting to come out so I wanted to make sure they had plenty of room for the clover. After the clover, I suspect there will be a dearth for a few weeks, followed by another wildflower flow of some sort, then the big goldenrod flow (which I get so much goldenrod that the bees will pack the entire hive with it. I never have to feed an established hive before winter (at least I haven't yet) and I still get a ton of it to sell.
Anyway, back to your questions....I will typically harvest super by super since I use an extractor. I'm not going to dirty up that thing for a few frames. I will however check all of the partially full supers for frames that are capped over and take them in the mean time though. Might as well get what I can since I have the extractor out.
The books do not seem to give me a good idea on when to harvest.
I hope that gives you an idea. :)
Topic: Watery honey (Read 8204 times)