Harvest time...

Anyone asking me how much honey I've had this year is going to get a slightly odd answer.  This year my main crop harvest is slightly under 5'3"...

That 9 supers, averaging 30llbs each, is about 270 llbs.

Anyone (mad) enough to be attempting to harvest that amount of honey in one day needs a plan of action...

Starting above with dust sheets to protect the kitchen floor and also a tank to settle the harvest in, a couple of trays to uncap the frames in, the extractor and plenty of buckets...

 

 




Now the latest word from local beekeepers who have already harvested this year is that the honey looks particularly dark and thick this year.  My bees seem to have fed on the same forage as everyone else's as it was very slow to drain out of the extractor....

 

So I resorted to tipping it forward after each batch of frames, this was my view for much of the afternoon...

I figured out pretty quickly that if I filled the filter to the top...

... it would have drained through by the time the next batch of frames had stopped spinning...

So by the time I was half way through...

 

I was truly multi-tasking...

Uncapping..

 

loading the extractor...

Draining and filtering...

 

And filling buckets...

and after about 10 hours ( I did stop for a bit of lunch & tea) I was finally down to the last few frames... 

But I do have something worthwhile to show for my efforts...

I'd better order some jars now...