As a new Beek, I took another step on the long Journey of new experiences this weekend when I pulled and extracted my first honey. :)
All and all, I think it went well, I started in mid January with two Nucs and lost one along the way. Since then I had added a number of swarms (some from my hives, many not), as well as a few cut outs...with a few shake outs and newspaper combines thrown in the mix along the way. :)
Most importantly, I wanted to make sure I wasn't too aggressive in how much Honey I decided to take. I had ten hives...The only downer of the day was I discovered that wax moths had overrun one of my hives and it was a total loss. Of the remaining nine, I felt that three weren't strong enough to take anything from the bees. Of the remaining six, I ended up with 264.2 pounds of honey.
I have to give a shout-out to my friend Schawee who was nice enough, as always, to take the time to field a few phone calls and answer question throughout the weekend to help out this greenhorn. :laugh:
Bottles ordered, labels being designed...should be interesting. The journey continues.....