I have just drained my frames. About thirteen kilos in total.
My local beekeeper suggested I do this prior to August.
Why? because a substantial amount of the nectar has come from melaleuca blooms and it has a habit of going candied in the comb. This may be disasterous in the floframes.
Within four days of draining the busy little devils have commenced to fill them up again.
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G’day Stan, well done, that’s fantastic. Did you physically inspect the frames before extracting the honey to make sure the honey was ripe? If not you’d be advised to test the honey for water content if you intend on storing it for any length of time… cheers
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Hello Jeff
I have just completed the water in a saucepan test and I feel the honey is ripe.
The honey did not disperse into the water and when I poured the water off the honey remained in a blob on the bottom of the pan.
Am I reading this test correctly ?
Thank you Jeff for the heads up.
You need to get a refractometer. Cheap as chips from China on ebay
Hi Stan, yes absolutely that’s correct. However as @Dee says, a refractometer will give you an accurate reading.
I think what you did should be ok though, for a bit of piece of mind. The honey sure is stiff at the moment.
I see a lot of Melaleuca trees in flower up my way. That probably explains all the rain. Apparently the aborigines had a name for the Melaleuca tree that connects the flowering of them with rain. Don’t quote me, it was something I heard quite a few years ago. I might have heard wrong. However it’s funny that most times we get heaps of rain this time of year, the melaleuca’s are in flower. I used to call them tea trees. After a bit of study on Leptospermums, I discovered that there’s lots of other tea trees. I just call them paper barks now.
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How many frames, flow I’m assuming, did you drain for the 13kg’s?
Hi Skeggley
I emptied five of the six flow frames.
I am yet to see honey in the end of frame of six which is on the left side of the drain end of the box.
Thanks Dee, a refractometer it will be.
I looked at Google and an orange farmer can even tell when to harvest oranges with this device.