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Watching your hives, hoping the bees will move down to the supers below, usually doesn't help them to move faster ...
REMOVING HONEY FROM OUR BEES
The honey supers are removed by placing black
square lids over the open super. The lid of the top box on the hive is removed after smoking the bees.
The black lid, called a "Fume Board" is sprayed with a non-toxic liquid. It is sprayed on the
inside of the board.
The fume board is then placed on top of the honey super and the heat of the
sun begins to create a fumigation action. Generally, we place four fume boards on four hives at a time.
The bees begin to crawl downward to the bottom boxes. The honey super is checked to make sure that the bees have left it.
Sometimes, the bees can be stubborn. They don't always easily
leave the honey super. Therefore, we may need to resort to a blower to blow any remainder of bees from the super.
The bees aren't hurt. They fly back to their hive.
Once the bees are completely out of the honey
super, the boxes are stacked on a large pallet.
From the pallet, each stack is moved to smaller pallets and placed in the
"hot room".
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Bees begin to move down
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Bees start vacating
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Sometimes you have to wait
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Smoker helps sometimes
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Sometimes bees are stubborn
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So, blowing them out helps
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Most of the bees are out of this honey super
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Hard part is lifting honey supers!
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Each can weigh up to 100 lbs. or more
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The process of removal takes time, but at least allows for a short break |
Time enough to take a break and think about whether to re-super or move to another location |
Hives are back to 2-story and are ready for re-supering here or for moving to a new location for a different
variety of nectar/honey
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After honey supers are removed and the hives are
back to 2-stories high, we will either re-super them or move them to a new location for a different variety of nectar/honey.
Generally, during a great harvest year, from our farm location, most of the bees are moved to Carmel Valley.
There, they will forage for Sage nectar and most-likely
some lavender. We place empty honey supers on the bees after they are moved to the new location. Once
the supers are full, the process of removing them begins again. And we extract that variety of honey.
When they are back to 2-stories, once again, they
are transported to northern California. In Williams, they will forage for starthistle nectar. The process
starts again with supering them, removing the supers, and then extracting starthistle honey.
By mid-November, they are brought back home and
most of our bees are here until mid-February. By then, the whole process begins again, beginning with
Almond pollination.
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