First Honey Harvest! | Healthy Home Economist

How and when to reap your first batch of uncooked honey and honeycomb from a yard beehive.

I needed to share with you an image together with the main points of my first uncooked honey harvest as a novice yard beekeeper.

The honey in fact included the scrumptious honeycomb, a healthy pure chewing gum.

Timing

Harvesting honey from my very own yard hive was not an in a single day success by any means.

My first colony was established in March 2023, so it took over a 12 months for the hive to develop to the purpose the place extracting some honey may even be thought-about.

In different phrases, it’s unwise to take away honey from a colony that’s newly established, small, struggling, or in any other case not thriving and bursting on the seams with sufficient honey, nectar, and pollen to assist itself.

The honey with honeycomb within the picture above got here from one body that met the standards for availability for the beekeeper to take.

How to Harvest Honey

The strategy of harvesting the honey was fairly straightforward.

I merely dismissed the few bees that have been on the honey body and introduced it into the kitchen.

Then, I rigorously scraped the honey with intact honeycomb into a big bowl as you’ll be able to see above.

The honey with the comb shall be saved in a glass bowl with a safe lid within the pantry.

After the honey was faraway from the body, I positioned it on the patio propped up on the aspect of a chair so either side have been simply accessible.

The patio will not be removed from the hive, so the bees simply found it and rapidly started the clean-up of any sticky remnants.

Once cleaned by the bees (which can solely take a day!), the body will be put again within the hive.

I most popular to have the bees clear the body away from the hive versus placing it instantly again in (the bees will clear it wherever you place it!).

The motive is {that a} body with some free honey would danger some dripping all the way down to the underside of the hive and attracting wax moths…a dreaded infestation that I’ve had issues with this season.

While there are different strategies for harvesting honey that work effectively too, this can be a quite simple and easy strategy for a small harvest.

Hopefully, that is the primary of many extra to come back!

Learn More About Backyard Beekeeping

If you want to learn extra about my adventures as a yard beekeeper, the rising record of articles is beneath the yard beekeeping class.