Tuesday, May 10, 2011

This years flow

This years flow seems to be great!  I'm having a hard time keeping up with swarm management and adding more frames to catch the flow.  I'm pretty sure one of my hive has already swarmed and some are so tall I have to stand on cinder blocks to work them.

All of this has me thinking about extracting vs.crush and strain.  I have a manual extractor, but have been doing crush and strain.  This keeps my wax from staying in the hive for years with build up of toxins, but make re-waxing the frames a PIA and I loose some of the honey flow.  Time to reconsider.  To be perfectly honest, I'm thrifty and hate the tedious work of wiring frames.  2" starter strips or just plain old popsicle sticks are cheap and easy but I don't think my best choice any longer.  John Jones uses pre-wired foundation with his electric extractor with lots of success.  He has lots of pre-drawn frames that are ready to go after the bees finish cleaning them.  Cost is extra .50 per frame, but if I use the frames for 3 years (then melt for candle wax) it's worth the cost to not have to re do the frame and catch more flow.  Always learning as I go.

3 comments:

Venk said...

Fascinating. Love reading your blog - quite informative and you appear to be a well organised person.

Is it possible to use black type - easier to read.

I am a beekeeper - 3 hives in the Forest of Dean England. The weather a little different from where you are.

Best wishes.

Venk

Cassandra said...

Venk,

Thank you so much for the kind words. I would love to hear more about your hives in the Forest of Dean. Do you use the Warre hive? Do you blog? If so what is the link?

I will change the font to black right now. :)
Cassandra

Hemlock said...

I changed over from plasticell to foundationless in my honey supers. The time it's taking for the bees to create all that comb again is frustrating. Having to do that every year would be a bit much.

Congrats on the good flow and the chickens by the way. Sounds like you'll be having a great year.