From Hive to Home: Making and Harvesting Honey - Honeybee: Lessons from an Accidental Beekeeper - page 70

Itisimportanttomakesurethatthebeescapatleast80percentofthehoney-filledcells
on each side of a frame before you remove it. Honey from uncapped cells is watery
and not ready to harvest, because the bees have not yet finished evaporating the water
content of the nectar to 18 percent. If you harvest honey from frames that are not fully
capped, you run the risk of having honey that will ferment in the bottle.
Beekeepers remove their honey shallows and extract their honey for bottling at dif-
ferent times, depending on when fall arrives in their location. In the Northeast, this is
usually late August and September. Although you remove the honey shallow, the main
two deeps still contain enough honey for your bees to carry on the colony throughout
the rest of the fall and winter. Removing my first honey shallow from my own hive
wasamemorableoccasion.Thesightofaframefilledwithhoney,perfectlycappedand
glinting in the sun, is a beautiful and gratifying thing.
H ARVESTING THE H ONEY
Before the honey can be harvested, the shallows must be removed from the hive, and
the honeybees must be removed from the shallows and the frames. There are two ways
of removing the bees from the shallow. One is by using something called a bee escape .
A bee escape is a plastic insert that goes into that oval hole in the center of your inner
cover and acts as a one-way door. It allows the bees inside the honey shallow to crawl
down into the deeps, but not return to the honey shallows. You place the bee escape
between the shallow and deeps a day or two before you want to remove the shallow
from the hive. Generally, after twenty-four hours, all of the bees will have left the shal-
low and will not be unable to return, allowing you to remove the honey super and leave
the bees behind.
Thesecondmethodofremovingbeesisfortheimpatientbeekeeper,anditistheone
that I prefer. It involves a fume board and some aromatic spray. A fume board is a flat
board resembling a hive cover with foam lining the inside. Essentially, you remove the
inner and outer covers of the hive and replace them with the fume board. But before
youdo,youspraythefumeboardwithanaromatic spraythatsmells likealmonds.This
sprayclearsthebeesoutofthehoneyshallows.Beesdislikethearomasointenselythat
theywillmovedownintothedeepsandawayfromthefumeboard,thusabandoningthe
shallowanditsframesalmostimmediately.Afterinstallingthefumeboard,youneedto
wait only about twenty minutes before removing the shallow.
Whenyouarereadytoremoveyourhoneyshallow,useyourhivetooltogentlypryit
away from the hive's top deep, leaving the fume board on top of the shallow. Check the
shallow to make sure there aren't any live honeybees left inside. You can brush away
any few bees left behind using a simple household brush. Store the shallow in a plastic