Three frames of honey at a time in the manual extractor gave me the best chance of extracting honey without damaging the extractor.
After losing one of my two honey bee hives last winter, I was relying on one healthy hive. Fortunately, this hive has a newly marked queen and the bees are well behaved, slow to anger and good a producing honey. In the end I had three supers which were all well, but not fully, filled with honey when I got a loan of a manual extractor from the Fingal Beekeepers, see www.irishbeekeeping.ie. Good exercise extracting honey from the frames in the supers as they must be spun very fast to extract the thick golden liquid from the comb. Now I am treating the bees with Apiguard to kill any varroa mites which are preying on bees which are getting ready to overwinter. I will then give them a good syrup feed so they can build up stores of food to sustain the colony until the temperature gets back up to 15 degrees c next spring.
Trevor is co-founder and was, until his appointment to Government, a board member of Sonairte, the Irish National Ecology Centre, near Julianstown, County Meath which is an Agricultural Training and Visitor centre with a 2.2 acre walled organic garden. He is also a member of Amnesty International, the Dublin Food Co-op, the Irish Organic Farmers’ and Growers’ Association, Organic Trust and a former member of Macra na Feirme. A former teacher and fluent Irish speaker, he relaxes by reading, walking and playing music. His favourite form of relaxation is tending to his prolific organic garden at home in Balbriggan, North County Dublin, an area known by many as Fingal.
Source: Trevor’s Kitchen Garden – Happy with 40 Pound Jars of Honey from One Hive – Trevor Sargent
