I know it is late in the season to be taking honey from the hive but I
have been slow to harvest much at all any earlier. Due to wet and windy weather and projects elsewhere, the opportunities simply were not there.
A hindrance to harvesting this year was a degree of cross combing that needed sorting out, with most of the honey stores being spread out amongst the horizontal log shape of the colonies. Harvesting was tricky to do without blundering down into the brood nest.
My attempts at queen breeding have been postponed till next year.
However, my inspection yesterday went well. Smoker lit and fuelled with oak havings which I light up with the help of a few capfuls of methylated spirits. Despite this and being wrapped up well under my smock and veil, I was stung lightly through my sock and again on the lower right leg from a bee that ventured up my trousers!
Three of the colonies are doing quite well with no depletion in numbers as yet.
The fourth colony have not recovered in number after being shaken down from an old hive into my own Cathedral top-bar hive. The idea is to enable interchangeable bars and easier manipulation.
I shall feed from now on, till Christmas or they may not overwinter.
I prefer to use the honey without extracting from the comb and managed to gather 10lbs in all.
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