The Honey Harvest - 2026 (Part Two)

We still have honey that's dripping off of the cappings, so we won't have final numbers on the total number of pounds/gallons of honey for another day.  Our plans were to purchase a "Honey House," essentially an outdoor shed to store all the honeybee equipment in and to do the extracting in.  We decided to hold off for another year.

As it turns out, the garage is a fine place to do the job.  I'll show you the setup.  After bringing in the wagon with all the honey supers in it, we take the frames out of each box and use the knife to uncap the frames.  You can see the white uncapping tank on the table in the center.  The extractor is just to the right of the uncapping table.  Food-grade buckets with filters are positioned underneath the honey gates of both the uncapping tank and the extractor.

It gets quite warm in the garage.  Therefore, we have fans blowing on us.  The space beneath the doors and the garage doors were sealed up and it worked.  There might have been a total of six bees that got inside the garage during the extraction process.

As we spun the frames in the extractor to remove all the honey, we placed the empty frames back in the boxes.  I brought them out and stacked them criss-cross on a bench near the hives.  Bees are opportunistic, hard working creatures.  They will go through each frame, picking it clean of honey.  They'll bring that honey back to the hives

We generally leave the boxes like this out for around three days.  By that time the bees have salvaged all the honey.  We'll take the cleaned frames and put them in the freezer.  We want to make sure that any insect that might have laid eggs in the frames will be killed by sub-zero temperatures.  

In the spring, we'll put the honey supers with these frames back on the hives.  Bees expend a lot of energy making wax to draw out honeycomb.  If you put these frames out that have drawn comb on them already, the bees use their energy to make HONEY, not wax.  Re-using frames with drawn comb gives the bees a head start and I think that translates into a better honey harvest.

When we stack the boxes by the hive, it doesn't take the bees long to find it.  The begin, in earnest, to cover the boxes, and get all the honey to bring back to the hive.  You can hear a loud buzzing when you walk outside.  Those bees are working to get their honey back!  Click on the arrow below to watch the honeybees fly around as they discover the honey remaining on the frames and work to bring it back.

We'll be back with the third segment of this Summer Honey Series in a day or two.

The Honey Harvest - July 2026 (Part One)

It was time.  Past time, actually, to harvest 2026 honey.  We had pulled fall honey in October.  We sold out of all of our July 2025 honey and were now selling the fall honey and were almost out of that.  Time to see what our honeybees had produced.  We woke up and got all the goats milked and cow milked and then got everything set up in our garage to extract honey.

We lit the smoker and began on the last hive on the left.  To pull honey, you open the boxes and go through each frame.  You are looking for frames of capped honey.  Uncapped honey is still nectar.  You don't want to pull this as the moisture content is too high.  In reality, not all frames will be 100% capped.  In that case, the rule of thumb taught to us by the bee club is to go ahead and harvest if the frame is 80% capped.

It is a process of going through each frame, separating frames to harvest versus frames to put back on the hive to harvest later - maybe this fall.  A thing to remember is "this is the bees' honey."  They use it to feed on.  They are sharing their honey with you.  Of course, we want a good harvest, though!  In going through the hives, even though it was VERY hot, the bees were surprisingly mild mannered.

We shook and brushed the bees off of the frames of capped honey and stacked in a wagon.  Then we moved to the patio and blew the remainder of the bees off with a leaf blower.  We don't have a honey house.  We use the garage to do the honey extracting.  I wheeled the wagon with 6 medium boxes of honey into the garage.  I had all cracks in the doors and windows sealed up to keep the bees out.  They are protective of their honey and will seek it out.

Here is a decent example of a capped frame of honey.  When the honey has reached it's desired peak, the bees seal it behind a capping of wax.

This close-up photo is a great example of capped honey.  There is a coating of wax that protects the sweet honey lying just beneath the cap.  To harvest the honey, the cap must be removed.  More on that in a minute...

This photo shows a good example of capped honey as well as uncapped nectar.  As soon as the nectar is dehydrated, the bees will cap those cells as well.

A serrated bread knife is used to cut the outer wax cap off of the frame.  This exposes the sweet honey lying beneath the cap.  Russ, our oldest son, has perfected the craft of uncapping honey.

Tricia uncaps as well.

On some frames, the wax isn't built out enough.  When this happens, the knife doesn't remove the wax cap.  Another tool is used to puncture the wax cap that wasn't broken with the initial knife cut.  This entire process takes place above an uncapping tank that captures the wax.  (We'll use that.  In later posts we'll show that process.)  Honey drains from the wax into a reservoir below.

Here is what a frame of honey looks like that has been uncapped.

Here are four uncapped medium frames of honey ready to go into the extractor.  These are stacked inside the extractor.

The extractor spins the frames at a high rate of speed.  Centrifugal force causes the honey to be pulled out of the frames.  As it spins, the honey is withdrawn from the frame and the honey hits the sides of the extractor cylinder and drains to a reservoir beneath.  The extractor that was given to us is powered by electricity.  It takes about 10 minutes to extract the honey from the frames.  Once the frames have been spun, the cells in the frame that were once heavy and filled with honey are virtually empty.

The drum gradually fills and must be emptied into food grade 5 gallon buckets through the honey gate.  It goes through a series of filters to remove any bees, fibers, wax and other things that might be in the honey.

Back to the uncapping tank.  As the wax cap is cut off and opened up, he wax collects on top of the uncapping tank.  Honey that is mixed with the wax gradually drains into the reservoir beneath.  The wax will be later rendered and we'll use the beeswax to wax the foundation on new frames as well as to make lip balm, candles and bread bags.  Nothing goes to waste!

You can see that there are marked lines on the tank below.  Just from uncapping, we have 5 gallons of honey in the uncapping tank, just from the uncapping.

This honey is poured through a filter and into a food grade 5 gallon bucket situated below.

Tomorrow, we'll talk more about the harvest.  How much did we get?  How does it compare to last year's harvest?  We'll answer those questions and more.

It's Almost Time

As we inch toward August, pulling honey from our six hives has been on the calendar, but we just haven't gotten the job done.  We'll try to get the honey pulled this weekend, but let's see how it goes.  Over near the purple hull pea patch, I planted a row of zinnias for the beauty, but also for the bees.  Zinnias are the easiest thing to grow.  In fact, they may grow easier than weeds!  As I look at the multi-colored blooms of the zinnias, I see that they are not disappointing to attract the honeybees.

Honestly, I used to not plant any flowers at all, choosing to grow things that we can eat.  I still do that, but I may have softened up regarding planting flowers.  I'm going to save all the seeds from the zinnias and plant a whole bunch of them next year as they produce both nectar and pollen that honeybees are attracted to.

I'm going to show you two of the six boxes of bees that we have.  As summertime temperatures mount, bees congregate on the outside of the bee boxes.  It's all about the heat.  Fewer bees inside the box means lower temperature inside the hive.  Just look at all the bees outside the box:

This photo just zooms in a little closer so that you can see the number of bees we're talking about:

Same thing on this hive.  You'll note that on the bottom there are two deep boxes.  This is where the brood is.  I have a queen excluder to keep the queen within the two deep boxes.  On top of the queen excluder are three honey supers.

In the next few days when we pull honey, we'll go through every single frame in the honey supers and pull out capped honey.  From this capped honey we'll extract our spring honey.  We'll show you the entire process once we get going.

A Sound in the Night

Monday night was a typical night.  After supper, we sat down, as has been our latest routine, in watching an episode or two of Gunsmoke.  We began at the very beginning of the series when John Wayne introduced James Arness playing US Marshal Matt Dillon.  We were watching Matt and Miss Kitty and Doc and Chester when all of a sudden, we heard a loud shaking sound.

Tricia and I looked at one another.  It sounded as if someone was trying to come into the house through one of the doors.  It was scary.  I ran and got my pistol and began a quick search to see what was going on.  Tricia turned on all the floodlights outside.  We couldn't find the source of the noise.  Unsettled, I went to bed with my pistol on the bedside table.

The sun rose the next morning, and we went out and fed the animals and milked the goats and cow.  We fed the chickens and opened the nesting boxes and came inside to have coffee and read the Bible before starting our day and going off to work.  We were still puzzled about the night's mysterious noise.  That is, until I looked outside the front porch.

Mystery solved!  Overnight, even though the weather was still and quiet, a rotten center of an oak tree limb had given way and the large limb fell all the way to the ground.  It was this noise that gave us a scare the night before and not some nighttime bandit.  When it hit the ground, it shook the house!

I was grateful on one account that there was no villain lurking around "Dodge City," but on the other hand I was looking at a lot more than a large limb on the ground.  I was looking at a lot of work!

The limb had fallen from quite a ways up in the tree.  Gravity had taken her down to the ground quickly.

As I looked at the task ahead, I made an inventory of what I'd need.  Basically, I'd need my chainsaw.  It's a Greenworks 80 volt 18 inch chainsaw.  I would've never thought a battery-powered chainsaw was up to the job, but this little tool has proven itself time and again.  I brought the saw and some bar and chain oil and began limbing the tree out, hauling the tree tops out to the pasture for the goats and cows to make quick work of.

It was slow going at first, but if you keep at the job with persistence, you start seeing the fruits of your labors.

A little later on and the fallen tree limb had transformed itself into firewood for a 2027 winter day.

With the job complete and out of the way, we watched Gunsmoke tonight without any interruption!

They Say That Breaking Up is Hard to Do

Tonight we'll show you the evening routine.  All throughout the day LuLu and Betsy spend quality time together.  Betsy will drink her fill of rich, Jersey milk and then she'll go nap in the shade somewhere, shaking her ears to chase off pesky flies.  LuLu keeps a close eye on her girl as she grazes in the pasture.  As the sun begins baking down and the heat rises to around 96 degrees, the cows find shade under the live oak trees and rest.  They'll nap, conserving energy.  Lots of times, if the moon is bright, they find it is comfortable to graze at night.  

At around 8 pm, Tricia and I go out to the barn and open the gate.  It's time for the overnight separation.  You see, daytime milk is 100% for Betsy.  However, LuLu's nighttime milk is all ours.  We run LuLu and Betsy into the barn.  LuLu is greeted with a bucket of sweet feed and alfalfa in the trough.  This encourages her to get into the habit of coming in the barn.  We turn the fan on and Tricia waits with LuLu as she eats her supper.

Betsy is run into a stall on the side of the milking stalls to keep her separated from her momma.  They'll moo and fuss and carry-on, but they'll get to get back together in the morning after milking time.

Here's an overview of the separation operation.  I'm in the goat milking stall on the south side of the barn.  When LuLu is finished eating, we'll go ahead and run her out of the barn.  She can go chase down her supper with some water or do whatever she'd like.  We leave the gate to the barnyard open so that she can come at any time of the night and touch noses with Betsy through the gate.  We just don't want Betsy getting her milk.  We have to be considerate neighbors as we do have next door neighbors and sometimes the momma cow will bellow for her calf and it is so loud it could wake the neighborhood!

Elsie, our heifer, comes to check out what's going on.  There is nothing she'd like more than to get a bucket of sweet feed and alfalfa.  She's a pig.  The thing is, we have a little rule: While grass is growing in the pasture, the only way you'll get feed is if you give us a calf and are in milk.  Elsie, you are on the clock.

Tomorrow morning we'll milk LuLu out and then put her and Betsy back together.  Betsy will be so happy to get her share of the milk.

Little Frisky Betsy

It's around 8 pm Sunday evening and we're about to go separate Betsy from her Momma, LuLu. First, we let Betsy drink as much milk as she wants. She needs to fill her little belly, because overnight she'll be in the stall, while LuLu is out in the pasture. At 6 am we'll go out to milk LuLu. This will be our milk. Then we'll put them together and LuLu will have the opportunity to drink her momma's milk all day long. Then we'll do the same thing every single afternoon.  This is how we share the milk with the calf and both parties are happy!

So far you've only seen still shots of little Betsy, but tonight I have a home movie for you.  Click the red arrow below to see Betsy in all her glory.

Getting into A Good Routine

Life contains routines.  Since we are limited by a finite amount of time, it becomes important to become efficient in what you do.  It is true in a work setting, in personal projects, and even things on the farm.  We were already milking two goats twice a day.  Adding in milking LuLu once a day, as we share the milk with Betsy, her calf, and that's a lot of additional time to daily chores.

We milk LuLu in the late afternoon.  So far she hasn't gotten into the routine of coming to the barn to be milked.  But she will.  Right now we have to call her and walk way out into the pasture to get her and walk her to the barn.  Betsy will follow her on some days.  Most days, she's spirited and will run around and go exactly where you don't want her to go.  She hasn't figured out the concept of walking through an open gate yet!  It normally takes two people to get them both in the barn.  You may ask, why even bring Betsy into the barn at milking time?  It's important to have Betsy beside LuLu in the barn as LuLu will get nervous if her calf isn't beside her.  Furthermore, she won't drop her milk for us. 

In the past several afternoons, we haven't had to walk quite as far out in the pasture and Betsy has become more of a willing participant.  They're gonna get it.  It's a function of showing them that there is a reward for them doing what we want them to do.

The second routine is milking.  Even though a cow has been milked before, they have to get back into practice.  First thing, in the photo below, you see Betsy positioned by LuLu's head.  That way it comforts LuLu.  She's not worried about her calf.  She's a good momma.

Once we have LuLu in the milking stall and Betsy in place, we hobble one of LuLu's back legs.  This keeps her from kicking.  We pour the feed in the trough and start milking.  To hand-milk, it generally takes about 20 minutes.  This presents a problem, because LuLu is impatient.  If she finishes her supper, she backs up in the milking stall, making it hard to finish milking.

Over the past several evenings, LuLu has settled into a groove and stands still when she finishes eating.  It has to feel good and relieving to have her udders emptied from all the pressure of a full bag.  Routines are a part of life and as we go, we fine-tune the processes to see if we can make things better, more efficient and timely.  Some things we try and it doesn't work.  In that case, we revert back to the old routine.  But we're always looking for a better way.

I know you may be thinking that a better way would be to purchase a milking machine rather than milking by hand.  That day may come as we're getting older, but what we find is that any time you save by milking mechanically, you gobble up that time saved on the back-end in sterilizing the equipment.  For now, we'll stay with hand milking.