Harvesting DELICIOUS Raw, Organic Honey!

so welcome back everybody today we're going to get into some of these beehives to see if we can find some honey that's ready to extract now I don't usually like to do this until June or July well I usually wait until all of the honey is ripe and ready to go so I can just do this one time but right now I've only got about 1/2 of a pound of honey left on my table at the house so it's almost an emergency it's time to see if we can find some honey also if we go ahead and extract what's already there that you know the bees an opportunity to put more honey into the empty frames that we make for them so let's go ahead and open up some of these hives and see what we can find [Music] so the odds are good that I won't find anything or at least not any drawn comb on this topmost box but we got to get it out of the way first before we go into any of the lower frames there's some of them up here but we're gonna have to go lower to find anything useful so again not a lot going on in this box let's just take a frame out and see what they're doing so you can see I hope you can see that at least they have got a good bit of nectar stored in these frames but it's nowhere near capped I believe that there might be something promising in the next box there it's getting some weight to it so they're getting real close on that frame but it's not quite done either we'll set it to the side getting very close on that one but not quiet good rule of thumb is not to take these frames so that's actually she took out brood in it the good rule of thumb is to not take these frames until eighty percent of those cappings are camped the reason that a lot of these are still open is because what the bees do is when they bring nectar back to the hive they have to dry that nectar down to a certain moisture content and when it hits a certain moisture content that's the point when it becomes honey and if you extract and that is closed if you extract too much open nectar your honey will actually end up fermenting because the moisture content is way too high all right see I'm gonna take this frame right here stick in there because that right there I suspect is dry enough on this side you're looking at ninety five percent cap so we'll shake the bees off of this and put this to the side so I'm not a commercial beekeeper and the reason that I say that is because most commercial beekeepers they will wait of course and they'll take entire supers and extract entire entire supers at a time I'm going to take this one and extract just that side the other side isn't quite ready but commercial beekeepers will just take entire supers I'm just a hobby beekeeper I've got ten hive and that allows me the luxury of just kind of extracting around the brood nest and you know extracting whatever I find whenever I want to put these back together after we get done extracting from after we get done extracting we'll come back and put those two friends back in there so let's move on to the next box well hey listen let's check the next um let's check the lower box first I expect all I'll find in here is some honey but quite a bit of brood I get a lot of people asking why don't wear gloves to do this and what's a second I say that I get stung on my finger but most of the time bees don't really sting your hands that bad only if you're jarring them around and knocking them around and making them angry will they resort to resort to that they really prefer faces in areas of areas of high contrast they like to get tangled up in hair and now this there's nothing happening on that except probably some eggs so we're not gonna we're not gonna deal with that box at all let's put it back together move on to the next time not a lot going on in this top box I was actually in these hives this week earlier I probably added this hive with this box and then I'm not even sure maybe not I can't remember man that is so close so close to being done actually I think I'm probably going to take this frame since I'm just kind of doing a mini harvest yeah that looks good since I'm doing a mini harvest and all of this honey is gonna be for my own use I'm gonna go ahead and take this because they are on the verge of capping pretty much all of these frames see these right here her out of the way see these right here these are almost capped themselves these are fully capped and I would think I'm good with taking this friend see what else we got in here oh yeah that's good let me give you a closer look and I'll show you what I'm show you what I'm talking about here so hope you can see this these frames I'm sorry these cells in the middle right here are fully camp that means that honey is 100% ripe and ready to go but if we look at the other side there are fewer cells capped but the bees are working actively on camping a lot of these cells you see right in here those cells are almost capped I feel fine taking this frame I would consider it a dry frame if it was honey that I was about to go sell I would probably not do that but since it's for my own use and it's just a small amount I'm gonna go ahead and do it yeah I'll take that one too that's probably all I'm gonna get out of this well yeah let's check this friend yeah that one right there that one beat would be wait man that one will be way too risky see that that side looks outside of them look great for that side is nowhere near ready let's check the next box this wind is awful to death hope it's not affecting the audio I can kind of see down in there I don't I don't know about this box we'll pull a couple of frames just to see the yeah so they've begun to fill that in that was actually brewed not too long ago you can see over here that it's hard to see lips let's get a closer to look and I'll show you all these this larvae and these eggs and stuff these bees make so this is actually a really good frame to show you all the various stages of brood rearing in a hive so you've got capped cells all in here some of those are probably getting ready to hatch some of them are almost capped so number alright so I'm not sure if I getting ready to hatch him out but they're older brood then you've got larvae to the little tiny worms down in here then you've got even smaller stages and then right in here you've got eggs and you can see and I think that one right in the middle actually maybe three sometimes don't keep it low valeting work behave in this case it's not because you see all these other cells they have one some of them have two in there that could indicate that there is a queen in there that has just been mated but I this have seriously they have a very healthy queen sometimes when Queens are brand-new and they've just been mated they will have trouble and they're just learning to lay eggs but yeah this is a good hype this is a really good frame for y'all to see all this these this various stages of so when I first started beekeeping I used chemical treatments in my hives and I actually marked the frames once I switch to organic I marked to the ones that I use the chemical treatments in now I'm not gonna extract that this hive because that's one of the friends that was used during the time that I was using chemical treatments so we're not gonna extract after that we will leave that for the bees for winter time unfortunately that's a appears to be a pretty solid frame let's look at it and see what we're missing out on here you know that is a heavy heavy frame you look at that look at that that kills me that I've got to leave that but all right I'm not interested in eating pesticides and honestly that has probably broken down after all these years and I wouldn't expect there to be traces left but yeah I'm not gonna eat that stuff I Spit this hog back together we'll definitely take that one tell you what we'll take this one also this would be a good one we can only extract half of it but it'll be a good one to counterbalance the other half frame and the extractor that we got earlier this frame is a mess you see they've done pretty well on this side but they haven't done anything on this side and probably the reason for that is this other frame over here they've just drawn it out farther into that other frame we've kind of made a mess out of it I've said this on my videos before but if you're a beekeeper you do not have one of these max ant frame lifts or tools you should seriously consider the investment they're not they're really not that much more expensive than standard frame pipe tools but my goodness they are so much more convenient they fit in my hand better they do a better job I think personally I mean that's just my opinion but telling you they are worth it they are well worth [Music] it actually started drizzling on those in that last I haven't I'll tell you what if it's one thing these hate is to be worked in the rain so we're kind of taking a risk here but it's it's slacked off hopefully it'll stay gone take that one too so here's something let's get closed that was a very common question that I got last year that I think I can answer with this frame right here let's get close and let me show you so one of the most common questions I got on last year's honey harvesting video was why are some of these combs dark and why are some of them light and a lot of people said well maybe it's because the honey is darker and you know I think that's actually a pretty good guess but most commonly it's because the combs have been used for brood rearing instead of honey production or simply they're just older older combs they're not really dirty but they're just stained because of more use now this is a good example on this comb because this frame cuz we can see both of the stages of of color on this see on these edges right here the comb on the tips especially of these cells is much newer so it's nice and pretty white but as you get towards the middle you can see that these combs or this wax has been used much much longer this comb I'm sorry this frame has been in use since 2014 it says on the top here so you can see that a lot of these have gotten a lot of these cells have seen quite a bit of you see how much darker these cells are than these cells it's just simply the amount of use or what they have been used for but the honey is the same either way you see how nice and clear and light that honey is and if we go towards the middle it's pretty much the same color maybe a little bit darker that some of this might actually be last year's honey I'm not sure but anyway bottom line is the honey doesn't really affect the color of the comb see there we go there some of that nice light stuff so I hope that hope that helps answer that question this oh okay yeah I see I see the problem here let's let's take this one off and I'll show you all the problem that I've got on this one I don't have to take it apart yeah here we go watch this so guys this is what happens when you take when you're slopping you don't put all your frames in your boxes properly check this out they've just pretty well made a mess out of that they're making honey in it though so can't ask for much more than that I think I'll probably leave it and I can get cut comb honey out of that say what I can't get to you how many people I get commenting on my last honey harvest video they they say man it's 3 o'clock in the morning I've got a test tomorrow I really ought to be studying what in the world am I doing here you know I should probably tell you to go study and do a good job in school but how much more educational can you get looking at honeybees harvesting honey you'll be the envy of your classroom nicely nice they stay up and go to bed later oh man they got a good laying pattern a good brood pattern really really a beautiful beautiful comb right here you can't see it but there's eggs all in here just gorgeous but we're not gonna get any honey out of it but seriously I'll go to sleep and do good in school and eat your fruits and vegetables so we're back in the shop guys we're gonna go ahead and extract this honey but here's something interesting my honey buckets from last year and it's been what 10 months 9 months I'm not sure I guess I just left the honey in here last year that was left over now this being honey it's not going to go bad so this money is actually still good it actually still tastes pretty good but I'm gonna wash it out because it's crystallized and if you put new honey into penny that's already crystallized the whole tub is going to crystallize much faster so we don't want that let's get these cleaned up and we'll start extracting that's much better and we have to drive these out really well because we don't want any extra moisture in this honey [Music] [Music] so guys that does it for the frames but now we're left with all these wax cappings that we cut off now this is certainly not waste there's a lot of really good stuff in here there's honey in there first and of course there's also wax as you can use for all kinds of different things what I like to do there's actually a tool called a capping spinner and I don't have one of course that sure they're kind of pricey but all I do in a small scale I mean this is just totally fine what I do is just I take my knife and I mixed this up really really good just to kind of get all of the honey separated from the wax and kind of make it uh just kind of make it a slurry I guess you could say say that's a that's a good enough consistency just like that and now I'll show you what I do with it now so my extractor is still draining here so we want to make sure to be very careful not to not to have our strainer and bucket right up under the disc because if we lose honey I mean Penny's pressure she's a little is hunting we worked hard for this the bees worked hard for it so you just want to move that out of the way if you're still trying to drain your extractor and at this point guess we're gonna have to move the extractor I'm just going to tilt it back a little bit I think to make it stop draining or to make it slow down at least okay so now we just dump all these Camping's into the strainer try not to let it get down in there if it gets in there stuck not liking it some not like it's an emergency but gonna keep you honey clean so now you just let that sit ideally let it sit overnight and that honey will separate right out of those wax cappings and you would be really surprised at how much honey is actually actually still in there so now we'll just put the extractor back to draining let it sit so it's been just a little bit over two hours at this point and this has pretty well drained out I mean it's not it's still fairly moist but there's a lot of a lot of honey that is that has drizzled through those wax cappings and through on down into the screen and it's been filtered out so I'm pretty happy with that I'm not gonna go any farther with that we'll take this out and see what we've got as far as honey goes so let's see what we've got this has been a very early honey harvest in my area and really anything is good but let's see what we've got here 30 pounds let's try that again yeah about 30 pounds we can subtract maybe a pound a pound and a half for the bucket and we got about 30 pounds here yeah that's um that's respectable so here's all our leftover wax what we're gonna do is we're gonna dump it back in this bucket here and slap the lid on it and if you're gonna store your wax like this for any amount of time you're gonna want to make sure that you take this and you freeze it put the whole bucket in the freezer and freeze it because invariably there's gonna be a little hive beetle down in there somewhere who's gonna lay an egg and that egg is gonna come a larva and it's going to just ruin the whole batch so we'll stick this in the freezer overnight and that'll take care of that [Music] [Music]

Channel: Fall Line Ridge

Views: 2,004,959

Rating: 4.86303 out of 5

Keywords: honey harvest, harvesting honey, bees, honeybees, apiary, honey harvesting, honey extraction, beekeeping, beekeeper, bee, honey bees, fall line ridge, bees making honey, bee hive honey extraction, honey bee harvest, making honey, robbing bees, collecting honey

Id: pRyQQefUVqE

Length: 31min 45sec (1905 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 28 2019