BEEKEEPING LEARNING CENTER > GENERAL BEEKEEPING - MAIN POSTING FORUM.
Comb honey. A journey of learning
max2:
Good to see that "one handed Les" can manage.
I wish I had a young helper.
I took some honey off yesterday including a few 1/2 frames I will cut into comb honey.
We definitely have a good flow on and pretty well prefect weather again.
I was mowing this yard early this morning (around 7AM on the first day of the year) and the bees were very calm, coming in with heavy loads.
Often they are not too happy with the smell of petrol and the fast movements in front of the hives.
If the weather hold I plan to take more honey off tomorrow.
One question: how do you burn your name on the side of the boxes?
Lesgold:
Hi Max
Happy new year to you and all forum members. I can?t mow around my bees without upsetting them unless there is a good flow on. Sounds like you have plenty of nectar coming in. Good luck with it. We did the markets yesterday and saw good crowds coming through after a slow start. Wish I had some comb to sell as people asked for it. Looks like it?s becoming a bit more popular, especially at this time of year. I had a brass stamp made for the mini frames. I just came up with some simple artwork and sent it off to a company who machined it out of a solid block of brass using a CNC router. I then attached the brass to a handle and the jobs done. The brand is heated with a propane torch.
Michael Bush:
I bought the branding iron from Mann Lake originally, but I bought additional irons from Nova: https://www.novatoolco.com The beehive ones are here: https://www.novatoolco.com/Brandingiron-BeeHive.htm
Can't say if they will ship to Australia or not... but I often buy things in Australia and have them shipped here.
Lesgold:
Hi Folks,
With the markets coming up, I thought I?d have a quick peak into the hive carrying the mini frames. On inspection, about half were fully capped. As you would expect, the frames in the centre of the box were done with most of the outer ones getting close.
When I first started using this system, I would wait until the frames were fully capped and then pull the whole box at once. As time went on, I started to take capped frames as required and replace them with with new frames. The problem with that method was that the bees would draw new comb in an uneven manner and the frames would end up being lop sided. The solution was quite simple. If I took 10 capped frames and then placed any new frames in one block, the bees would draw out the new comb evenly. This does require a bit of frame manipulation but that only takes a couple of minutes. The centre block was setup yesterday so that I could take what I needed today.
If I was organised, the whole process could have been carried out in one operation but unfortunately I only had a few frames constructed and had to jump in and build some more and add foundation to them.
Lesgold:
It was a simple task to take a couple of mini boxes down to the hive in prep for the rob.
The centre block of frames was removed and replaced with new empties.
The frames were quite good considering the small flow that we had over the summer.
Even though the bees were quiet, I wore gloves to protect my injured hand. I should be able to repeat this process in a couple of weeks if the Black butts continue to flower.
Cheers
Les
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