Ready...set....harvest!

So I worked the Rochester fair bee booth yesterday from 2-6. Getting there was interesting. First, I had to figure out where Rochester was (it's sort of between Carver, Wareham, and Lakeville). The fair had a website but NO directions. I googled the directions (565 Roundsville Rd.) and printed them out. Halfway there, just as I crossed Rt. 28, there was a huge accident in front of a vegetable stand, and the police were rerouting traffic. Oh, crud. I pulled off the road and tried to use Navigator on my phone to figure out how to get to 565 Roundsville, and I couldn't find the road. I tried to remember the roads in the intersection where the fair is from online, and I did a pretty good job at figuring it out. I was only seven minutes late...that is, until the nice police officer made me turn left and park a half mile away from the fairgrounds!!! I schlepped my equipment up to the bee booth at about 2:20. Sigh.

After the inauspicious beginning, though, it was fun. It was RURAL, but it was fun. I mean, come on. Where else on earth could you watch a ride-on lawnmower race? Our discussions with our patrons were quite often interrupted by the lecherous blacksmith to our right, the lowing cows and goats at the petting zoo to our left, or the tub racing announcements at the main field in front of us. It was very funny!

As we were packing up, I finally got to meet Jeannie, a woman who I've emailed back and forth to. She's the education coordinator for the bee club. She told me a rather alarming story of her first year of beekeeping, when she kept the supers (they are the shorter honey collection chambers at the top of the hive) on until she was ready to extract, and the bees ATE THE HONEY!!! Like, ALL of it. Yikes!

So today, I decided I was taking off my supers. Or at least those frames that were ready. And boy, that was an experience. I'm chalking it up to one more thing I wasn't accurately prepared for.

First of all, I try not to do bee work anymore because of the daycare behind me. The last thing I want is to have agitated bees and kids walking around nearby. Secondly, and here's a newsflash: BEES DO NOT LIKE HAVING HONEY TAKEN FROM THEM!! They made it, they worked HARD to cure it, and they are not very happy when a big bearlike human dismantles their hive and steals it. Third, I had no clue what to do with it when I got it out and no equipment!!

In the end, I only got three frames off. There were seven full frames of honey, but four of them need a little bit more capping (that's when they seal the honey) until they are ready to be extracted. I ended up having to make three new frames to replace the ones I took. I'd been hoping to reduce to one super, but it didn't work out that way. There weren't enough empty frames to do so already in the hive.

I put them in a clear bag (Jeannie said to do this because the wax moths need the dark) and brough them in the house, but now I don't know what to do. I either extract (and therefore need access to an extractor) or I crush and strain (which seems like an awful waste of, well, everything...you basically ruin the wax on the frames and you surely don't get much out of them!! So I guess now I store them and hope that I get near an extractor before the wax moths get near them. I think I'll stick them in the freezer, I've seen that as a suggestion.




One thing is for sure...I am SO not taking honey off of Joel's hive alone. Those bees are what they call in the bee world "hot", and I am too nervous about them to even try. So I'm going to ask him to join me to remove his honey. And then hopefully all four of us "newbees" will be able to put our heads together and do the extraction thing.