Harvesting 25 Kilograms of Honey from 1 Swarm!!

Hey everyone, what an honor and privilege it is to work with these magical little creatures. Bees really are the most important insect/animal on Earth (in my humble opinion) by a long shot.

We often get calls from folks for 'pest removal' like bees are pests? We always jump at this opportunity as we get free bees and more swarms for our hives hence more lovely delicious honey, albeit at times the job really tough as it was this time around.

I first visited this swarm about 6 weeks back and had a real 'baptism by fire' these bees were housed in a pool filter old and not used and has been there for years. When a bee hive is old and established you can be sure it will be a rather large battle as the swarm is large and the honey is plentiful and flowing in which case the bees will be SUPER AGGRESSIVE and there were.

This swarm in total stung me about 15 times, took about 5 visits to fully remove them, but eventually I prevailed and they produced us many kilo's of delicious raw honey and here it is 4 full boxes as below.

When one removes a feral swarm the combs are all mixed up, drone and worker combs and larvae, eggs as well as capped honey. The capped honey we either use and sell on the comb with the wax which tastes incredible and is very wholesome (superfood) packaged in plastic containers as below.

What we plan to do with all the excess wax is melt down and potentially sell to the cosmetic industry. Apparently the demand for bees wax is rather high, and why not, it really is the best available wax form.

Sorry about the green tinge I broke my phone (again) I am currently taking these pics with my HD helmet camera, but you get the idea!

As above much of the honey on the comb we crush and put through a strainer to drain off the honey and then bottle. We are planning on purchasing a honey press which will make our lives and job of separating honey from wax way easier and honey harvest volumes way higher!

Below most of the combs with brood we take out of their feral hives and then installed them into frames and then install in their hives, this really decreases their turnaround time and within a few days bees are happy and re-homed and settled with their own combs and brood to carry on as they were!

Below we have brood comb mostly worker bee combs and brood which we put back into the frames for the bees to nurture and raise their young from their feral home to our lovely luxurious bee-hive!

I took this pic to illustrate how I again got 'ZAPPED' I normally do not have a double chin, I am rather lean actually but on this particular night getting the last of this massive swarm I was stung 3 times through my bee suit veil, ye I could not believe it either, luckily I am not allergic so all shall be well and I am as right as rain :)

4 Rather Large boxes of honey, this swarm really was incredibly large and thanks to this super swarm, we now have 25 odd kgs of Honey and two nice strong swarms that seem to be settling in nicely and doing well.

The colour of honey varies largely dependent on many factors, age, temperature, nectar types etc. The above and below pic come from the same hive rather hard to believe given the vast color differences!

Be sure to stay tuned for more of my epic bee adventures ;)

Cheer$;)