Wrapping up the Season

The season is wrapping up! I believe we have quite a bit of late season nectar being collected, and today expect a good harvest of honey!

Unfortunately, my volunteer helper broke her ankle yesterday, so I was challenged with getting the honey supers off alone. And challenged with taking a photo with only myself as a photographer! Here is a selfie of myself wearing a backpack blower preparing to empty the supers.

I removed supers from each hive– 3 supers off the big ones and just one on the weakest. The weakest hive didn’t fill very much space, just a couple frames so I worked to blow bees out of a super with not much reward. We had very full supers on the strongest hives and therefore I was lifting 50-60 pounds! The bees blew out pretty easily with the backpack blower, this is my favorite method! I also enjoy watching the bees march back into their respective hives following.

The supers went to Dan Keane’s, veteran beekeeper, for extraction. He has a large extractor and an inspected facility so we can sell the honey at the giftshop. He harvested around 3 pails of honey and reported back that it is a very thick and fairly dark honey! Expect to see the seasonal honey for sale at Dow Gardens soon!