Chapter Five

As explained in the previous chapter the bees tell you when the time has come to take the honey. When they are clearly applying caps to the cells and the weather is suitable then the bee keeper must get to work. It is best to choose a day when it is sunny enough for a full compliment of bees to be out of the hive collecting honey. This will ensure that the hive is half empty and the bees are in as benevolent a mood as possible. Avoid thundery conditions (see Chapter II!), rain or high winds all of which cause trouble.

When bees were kept in straw skeps as one sees in old pictures the technique was to destroy the skep by burning the straw and catching the honey as it ran out. This dispersed the bees and was very wasteful. It was very much a method of despair. We have come a long way since then and although it would not be true to say that the bees do not notice the theft of their stores, it can now be done with a minimum of disturbance and danger to the handler, provided all goes well.

A modern hive is comprised of a large box, the "Brood Chamber" at the bottom of the hive, with the supers, which are smaller and contain the honey above it. The exit from the hive is at the bottom of the brood chamber. This larger box containing bigger frames carries the cells in which the queen lays the eggs, which become the colony's stock of bees. Between the top of the brood chamber and the super above there is a sheet of expanded metal with holes just big enough to allow the workers to pass to and fro through it, but too small to allow the queen to go through. She is thus prevented from laying eggs in the supers which must be reserved for honey stores only. This sheet is called, rather obviously, the queen excluder.

When honey is to be taken a flat board is placed between the brood chamber and the supers in addition to the queen excluder. The board is made of ply-wood and has two holes in it, which take two gadgets called bee escapes. They are, in fact, bee valves through which bees can creep from the super down into the brood-chamber, but they cannot creep back. They can fly out of the brood chamber in the usual way to collect honey, but when they return they cannot get into the super. If the board is put in place during the morning on a day when the colony is working well, the super will be cleared of bees by the following day. If all has gone well the bee keeper has only to lift off the super full of honey but empty of bees.

In the last few paragraphs I have described how everything is supposed to work. However, there is usually a snag or two to sort out. The most usual is when a small gap has escaped notice between the brood chamber and the super so that the bees have found a way back and the super is by no means clear of bees. A small number of bees in the super can easily be cleared off, especially if the colony is not aroused and angry. If the number of bees in the wrong place is significant they can still be cleared if the temper of the colony is peaceful. Each frame can be lifted out with its compliment of bees and they can be gently stroked off onto the landing board of the hive from where they will make their way into the brood chamber again. If this is not possible and there is a rising atmosphere of anger, it is best to close down the operation and start again another day.

The weather can also cause a change in circumstances that make it wisest to pack up until another day. This situation arises if a great majority of the bees are driven home by heavy rain, almost certainly not in the best of tempers, only to find their precious stores being threatened. This is a recipe for disaster and to abandon the operation should be seen as the exercise of discretion rather than a sign of weakness.

Sometimes, if taking honey very late in the year, hungry robber bees will discover that a super has been left unprotected by the bee keepers activities. This can cause chaos and great anger if the bees cannot protect their stores. If the predators have discovered an entry through a fault in the woodwork or a badly aligned super they can be driven off if there are not too many.

The best insurance against all these problems is good equipment and care in aligning the supers so that no gaps are left. All movement of equipment should be done as smoothly as possible. A series of bangs on the hive is a sure way of changing a calm colony into an angry one.

Once the bee keeper has a super full of honey but cleared of bees he must extract the contents and return the super to the hive for refilling. During a period of fair weather and a good nectar flow, clover or hawthorn for example, the bees of a strong hive will refill a super in possibly two weeks and that includes the work required of the bees in repairing the damage caused by the extracting.

The process of extracting is a straight forward mechanical operation. A table top extractor and a settling tank are all that is required. The extractor works on the centrifugal principle. It takes two frames at a time, which are spun round to throw out the honey in each cell. The frames are prepared by making use of the air space at the top of each individual cell. Using a hot knife the wax caps are sliced off with a minimum of damage and unnecessary stickiness. The extractor contains a wire cage into which two uncapped frames are placed, one each side so that they balance. The cage is then whizzed round by turning the handle. The honey that is thrown out runs down the inside of the extractor to gather in the bottom

A small extractor will hold about eighteen pounds of honey which is then run out through a tap in the bottom into the settling tank. This tank has a sieve fitted into the top through which the honey passes before running down to settle in the tank. The sieve removes any pieces of wax, dead bees and other debris so that the product is clear and any air bubbles disperse after a day or two. It is then run into jars for storage. The empty super goes back on the hive for the bees to clear up and start filling again.

In the next chapter I shall describe the techniques and aids used to enable the beekeeper to carry out the tasks I have described.

Chapter Six