Honey Site 2!!

Hey everyone, we were quiet optimistic on this visit. Wynand my landlord and partner said to me a few days back that he had recently lifted a few of these hives and that they were heavy. A heavy bee-hive is a bee-keepers dream as this is the perfect indication that the honey is flowing.

As you can see by these pics it is still very dry albeit well into Summer, the rainfall is rather late this year but we were positively optimistic!

We arrived at around 6pm just before the Sun went down for the day a little earlier than usual, we only work bees at night they are just generally less aggressive and more relaxed.

This is a catcher box or what Wynand likes to call a 'Vang Kassie' this has been hanging here for a few months now and sadly still not managed to catch us a new swarm! Holding Thumbs!

This is exactly what it looks like. A wine barrel. We rescued these bees last year and need to install them into a Langstroth hive, do check out more here as per wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Langstroth_hive

Our hives are wooden and painted with a wax based product giving a nice wood look, the pics on the wikipedia page are painted white also works very well as it reflects the heat, problem is the paint just does not last as long!

We will only relocate these bees into a proper hive in a month or two when the honey flow is in full swing. Sadly tonight on this visit we did not harvest any honey from this site.... BUT....

After inspecting all 12 odd hives here we headed back home to check the hives on this property, HEY PRESTO after lifting up 3 hives all very heavy so we just had to open them up. We were so blessed to be able to harvest around 15kgs of honey from 2 hives. I will be spinning the honey off the frames/combs in the next day or two and bottling.

We have a centrifugal honey spinner do check out more here as per wikipedia : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honey_extractor

Here we have my landlord and Partner preparing for the nights bee-harvesting festivities, He kind of looks like Sean Connery here don't you think?

After packing up all our equipment back into the Truck off we went to another site. The honey flow has generally been really slow this year sadly due to the low rainfall, this will all soon change as soon as we get a few decent heavy downfalls.

Tomorrow Team South Africa will hopefully be winning the Rugby World Cup, wishing all my fellow South African's and South African Rugby supporters all the best.

Be blessed and have an amazing weekend.
Cheer$;)