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How much do you like honey?

Here is a hardware cloth screen basket made by our handy son today for larger scale honey draining.
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It was made to rest on a stainless steel honey extractor that has a handy valve in the bottom.
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The big thing I've learnt from this thread is how easy it can be to extract honey. I've only ever seen it done with a rotary extractor. I've never seen it done in such a simple manner before.
 
FollowingHim said:
I've seen a few examples on YouTube, the idea being to have a single hinged lid over the whole thing as a roof, but then panels underneath that as lids over the actual frames, so you can just remove the lids over a small section of the hive at a time. Is that what you mean?
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Yes, that is exactly what I had in mind.
FollowingHim said:
I like the way some people put windows in the sides of top bar hives......It would make it more educational and allow some very basic observations to be done with no disturbance.
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The windows would show more with a top bar hive then a langstroth. It would be fun and may help keep a young person's attention.

Orchards are awesome! I hope it makes a lot of food for your family, and the bees.

It is nice to have a food source close by, but bees can travel up to five miles for food. Having a water source close is more important in our climate.

FollowingHim said:
The big thing I've learnt from this thread is how easy it can be to extract honey. I've only ever seen it done with a rotary extractor. I've never seen it done in such a simple manner before.
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When doing cut outs, or processing honey from a top bar hive it has to be crushed and drained. There are advantages to this method for someone that doesn't have a centrifugal extractor. You get more wax to use, and tend to get more pollen mixed into the honey which is healthy and gives the honey a different flavor. I like it. The disadvantage is the bees have to work harder to rebuild and replace honeycomb. More hive resources get used on wax building which can limit the amount of honey you get from a top bar hive.
 
Cap said:
Is it true that the honey bee population is severally declined as reported by the man?
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Since colony collapse hit back in the late 00's yes. Even today, overwinter losses can be quite high (pushing 40% on average, highest since CCD hit), even in fairly non-cropped areas with hives that aren't traveling for pollination. Things are stable, but much worse than in the past.

The wild honey bee population are almost completely gone in much of the country. But that dates back to the '90s with the introduction of the varroa mite. It's probably not as bad in the SW though due to African's. But it won't change elsewhere until we deal with the root causes.

Even for domestic beekeepers, it will likely stay this way, or even wax worse, until we have changes in federal regulations to stem the damage from fungal/insecticidal seed treatments, Bt corn, and widespread roundup use.

It's not just honey bees either; it affects all insects which propagates up the food chain. Populations of dozens of birds have collapsed. There is a massive, noticeable difference in insect population in an area with lots of corn vs. an area without just a county or two away. We're not there yet, but there is a potential risk we could collapse the entire ecological food chain if we're not careful.
 
Buying local honey is best, find unheated raw honey from someone you know produces it themselves. In a lot of areas there will be 'local' honey in stores, but it will just be a local processor who buys honey on the market; often importing questionable product from overseas.
 
Honey is okay food. No doubt when I was a kid I loved it a more. Now I just really enjoy having it with PB&J sandwiches. One day I would like to try bee keeping. At my home we have multiple carpenter bees that live in and around shed and pollinate our flowers.
 
BarefootSpirit916 said:
Honey is okay food. No doubt when I was a kid I loved it a more. Now I just really enjoy having it with PB&J sandwiches. One day I would like to try bee keeping. At my home we have multiple carpenter bees that live in and around shed and pollinate our flowers.
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Keeping bees can be a very rewarding hobby, and if you have gentle bees they can be kept in a city environment. You should check and make sure it is legal where you are.
Your carpenter bees, unlike honey bees, are native to the United States. They aren't as numerous as honey bees, but can still pollinate. They don't have stingers, but they don't make honey either. And they can do damage to structures when there are enough of them.

What I enjoy about honey is how different the honey can be from one area to another. So when someone tells me they don't like honey I often think they just haven't tasted much, as I'm sure there would be a flavor they would like.
If you ever get serious about bees or just want to learn more about them there is a forum called beesource that is a wealth of information.
 
After letting gravity drain the honey out of the screen, we fill jars.
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The last thing to do is write where the honey came from and put it on the shelf.
Here you can see the difference in color. The dark honey came from a colony in a hollow Elderberry tree, the light honey from the bees under the shed that are in the original post. 20190905_081157.jpg
All five jars of lighter honey are the same shade. The difference in the picture is how much light is coming through.
 
That first picture needs framing.
 
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