Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Harvesting Honey
Bees store honey. During a good year, they'll fill every space you provide. Honey is the
primary reason many people have bees. Here's where you have to take an honest look
at this part of having bees. It reflects back to the zucchini complex mentioned earlier,
but it applies to any garden harvest. How much honey can your family eat or use?
Honey yields vary every year. The amount of rain, varmints ransacking the place,
temperatures that are too cold or too hot, too little attention—all are factors that affect
how much or how little honey you'll get. But most years, your colony will produce
between 40 and 60 pounds (18.1 to 27.2 kg) of harvestable honey. Some years, with ad-
equate attention, 100 pounds (45.4 kg) isn't out of the question.
How much honey is that? A typical 5-gallon (19 l) pail holds 60 pounds (27.2 kg) of
honey. That's not a lot to distribute. If you're raising comb honey, that's 10 or 12 round
combs frames, or 120 or 130 of the small rectangular containers.
If you are realistic about how much to expect before you begin, you can plan the
type of honey to produce, how to best manage for production, and how to process it and
handle it once harvested. This goes a long way in avoiding the zucchini complex.
Extracted Honey
This is the most common form of honey, the one you're already familiar with—the kind
sold in a jar.
To produce liquid honey, you give the bees frames with plastic foundation. They
build beeswax comb on the foundation, fill the cells with honey, and cover them when
the honey is less than 18 percent water (called ripe honey).
Then, you remove the frames, and remove the wax cappings, leaving almost the en-
tire honey-filled comb intact on the frame. You'll save the beeswax and honey you re-
move for later use.
You'll find frames that have what are called “wet” cappings, as shown at top, and “dry”
cappings, at bottom. When bees place the wax covering over the cell filled with ripe
honey, they either place the wax capping directly on the honey, giving the cap a wet
appearance, or they leave a tiny airspace between the wax and the surface of the
honey, giving the cap a dry appearance. Comb honey producers prefer the dry look,
but neither wet nor dry caps have any effect on the quality or flavor of the honey.
