How I take honey from the bees hive

My cousin, Vickie, suited up the other day and helped me extract honey.  

 

When I was looking at the pictures on my camera, I noticed that she took a few.  I think there might be enough pics to give you an idea of the extracting process from the hive end of things.  I have never been able to show you, because I've never had anyone able to take pics while I take the frames.  At one time I did a post on extracting honey, after it's taken from the hive. But here is how you get it from the hive to the extractor.

 I keep bricks on my hives.  It makes it harder for the deer and raccoons to knock the lid off of the hives.  And yes, Susie (She Junks), a raccoon will completely ruin a hive.  They will not only eat the honey, but they will eat the bees too! The way you can tell a raccoon has been in a hive is there is a pile of wings in front of the hive!  Apparently wings aren't tasty. 

Now, see how in these two pictures, (above and below) both hives have two hive bodies.  The hive bodies in the above picture are painted light green.  Above the hive bodies are smaller 'boxes' called supers.  These supers are where the bees put the honey.  Some hives have more supers than others because when the bees fill a super, if I don't extract it, I add another one with empty frames to give them more room.

 You use a hive tool and pull the outer cover (lid) off of the hive.  Usually the outer cover is "glued" down by the bees with something they make called propopolis.

Then you pry the inner cover off.  Same situation...it's "glued' down.

  Then you start pulling frames.

 

You want to make sure the honey in the frames is capped over at least 90%, if not completely. 

 Here is a close up of the frame I am holding above.  it is not fully capped.

 

 If it is capped over, I gently shake the bees off of the frame in front of the hive.  If you look closely you will see bees flying around all over the place.

 If there are bees left on the frame, I gently brush them off with a special brush made just for this purpose.

This frame is completely capped

so I shook the bees off, and gently brushed the rest off.

 When the bees are completely off of a frame, I walk it over to the truck which isn't far from the hive.  I put them in an empty super (the box you see me holding here) and put a cover on it, so the bees cannot get back on their frame.  When someone helps me, as Vickie was doing, I have them do this job.  She also kept the smokers going.  Once I have two or three supers full, I take them to the garage where I continue the extracting process.  But first I put the hive back together, minus a few supers.

 In the garage...

See how I'm taking a serrated knife and slicing the cappings off of the frame?  That's how you expose the honey so you can extract it.

 

     This is the link to the rest of the extracting process if you want to check it out.

Cindy Bee