October 2004
A stack of Supers in the garage waiting for the honey
to be extracted
Once all the colonies have been fed we must concentrate on the first
job of October - extracting the honey.
On October 3rd and 7th we spent the afternoons spinnining down all the
frames we had taken from the hives and collecting the resulting honey
into a settling tank.
In the house to warm up
An extractor full of frames
Spinning at speed, the honey flys out of the frames
John
and Dad uncapping frames
Extracted
honey is drained into a settling tank.
After 24 hours, we filtered it into storage buckets ready for bottling into jars. The extracted supers were then placed back on the hives for a few days for the bees to clean before we finally removed them on 9th October and stored in the garage ready for use next year. Mouseguards were then screwed over all the hive entrances - the bees are now settled down for the Winter.
A
stack of supers to be cleaned by the bees
Mouseguards
on and entrance narrowed
But there is still the annual honey show held by the York and District
Beekeepers' Association at Merton on 20th October to prepare for.
Less than a fortnight for us to get anything ready - but we decided to
enter it again.
Dad and Paul spent a few hectic days filttering honey and preparing wax.
All the effort and hard work was again worthwhile - we won 1st prizes
for a shallow frame of comb and our entry for the a 4oz. block of wax.
We also claimed 2nd prizes for Dad's sweet mead and plain wax candle,
After a recount he was awarded third place over all! Not bad for amateurs!
Mead
on show (hic)!
Many
different types of honey
John Admires dads first prize for wax
During the last few days of October Paul and Lynn went to Flaxton to put
the mouseguards on the hives and settle the bees down for the Winter,
Paul
puts mouseguards on the Flaxton bees
Back at Monk Avenue on 24th we jarred up the first bucket of this season's
2004.honey.
Our
first jars of Monk Stray 2005 honey
