A super frame being 'uncapped'

2: Once uncapped, each frame is placed into a centrifuge extractor. When full, the centrifuge is carefully switched on and the speed is increased so that the honey is spun out of the honeycomb and runs to the bottom of the drum.

3: The tap at the bottom of the drum is opened and the honey runs out into a bucket.

There was some crystallisation of the honey in some frames, probably because this was early season rapeseed honey. But this meant that some of the honey could not be spun out of the honeycomb in the same way. Instead, the honeycomb was cut out of the frame with a knife and put in a separate bucket. This bucket is then placed in a warming cabinet so that the crystals melt, the honey liquefies and naturally separates from the wax. After a few days the wax is removed and the honey can be mixed with the rest of the extracted honey before being put into the settling tank.

The buckets in the warming cabinet

Once it has settled we will put the honey into jars one day later this week.

Bees are such amazing creatures and they let nothing go to waste. After extraction we are obviously left with lots of sticky, messy frames. These are put back into the hives and the bees clean up the mess for us, making use of all the leftover honey and wax. In a week or so I will remove these clean frames and fit new foundation ready for them to be used again.

Photos of Honeydale honey pots to follow very soon - we can’t wait!

...so she’s been marked (white for 2016)...

All is looking very good and a mass of beautifully coloured pollen has been collected.

Some of the bees have deformed wing virus.

This is not unusual, but is an indicator that some varroa is present. The bottom board of the hive was checked and varroa was found, along with wax moth grubs, so this will be kept under supervision and may have to be treated for varroa.

During the inspection, bee mentor Chris Wells removed a sealed queen cup with a virgin queen inside which was set aside. Other sealed queen cups were found but the queens inside had been killed by the emerged queen.

The second super is now also full, so we have added another super and another lift, meaning this hive now has three supers on it and around 20kg of honey so far.

We also performed an inspection of hive 2 - the one in special measures. Bee numbers were vastly reduced and many emerged queen cups were found, though no sign of the actual queen, suggesting this hive has swarmed, or at least has tried to. It is possible that one of the the swarms found last week was from this hive. We left a sealed queen cup in situ to allow a new queen to be produced and the hive can continue to develop as normal. As an insurance policy, should the queen cup fail to successfully hatch a queen, we introduced the virgin queen from hive 1 into hive 2. This hive will be inspected again in a week or so to see what happens next.


We then turned our attention to the swarns. The main swarm box, in which we placed a brood frame from hive 1, has lost some bees but there are still a healthy number remaining. We were unable to find a queen but the the temper of the colony and 'fanning' behaviour of the bees suggested there was one present somewhere. We are leaving it alone for now, to see if the colony develops and if a queen is apparent next time we inspect. The best case scenario is that we end up with another colony and therefore can start another hive, although it’s quite unlikely this colony will survive if there is no queen. We’ll inspect again next week and see if we can find the elusive queen.

The other box was empty so this swarm has been lost and similarly the swarm left in the tree has moved on.

But there will definitely be more bees arriving at Honeydale this week. The Sainfoin has just begun to flower and and the bees are flocking to it like...well, like bees round a honeypot! Sainfoin is such a popular plant for bees and produces some of the best honey, so Chris has been eagerly waiting for it to bloom and now that it has, he will be installing five of his own hives in our apiary.

Two swarms were found hanging from branches in the trees behind the hives, the largest one 3m high. One of the hives is being left alone while a new queen is created, so Paul’s first task was to perform an inspection of the other hive. He destroyed the incomplete queen cups but left the fully formed ones in situ as they will be needed if this hive proves to be the one that has swarmed and thereby lost its queen. Paul didn’t find the queen in the hive, but the good news is that there were still plenty of bees.

Paul then needed to gather the swarms. He took a brood frame from the strongest hive and put this into an empty nuc box - the containers in which nucleuses of bees first arrived at Honeydale, which Paul had fortuitously kept. Chris Wells had told him that any cardboard box would suffice, effectively mimicking the traditional bee skep, domed baskets which were used by beekeepers for centuries.