Purchased my bees in September and have just harvested. My first lot of honey was so excited. Harvested just over 21 kilos of sweet pure honey. The girls have already cleaned up the frames and are starting to refill with honey again. Still excited sitting watching them every day like a kid at Christmas.
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Nice harvest!
Some common question that come up frequently:
Did you do all 7 frames at once? Open them all in one go or a few at a time?
Did you open them segmentally or the whole frame at once?
Was there much spillage (in the tray or into the brood box)?
Is the bee bearding a response to the harvest?
Harvested all 7 frames on the same day maybe opening each frame about a 1/3 at a time. Total time from start to finish around 2.5 hrs. No the bearding was just a photo i threw in it was from a warm night in beautiful Brisbane. A small leakage of honey into the brood box and a little in the tubes but the girls had a good clean up by the next day
Hi Moby, that’s a huge beard of bees. Be aware that colonies can swarm about now, because I just now got home from a trip to Caboolture, where a hive swarmed during the last week or so. I met a Flow hive owner at Burnett Beekeeping Supplies who told me his bees have gone berserk during the past fortnight.
Hi Jeff thanks for that heads up but that photo was from a few weeks ago. When you say his bees were going beserk is that filling the frames again. I have just checked mine after coming home from work and both end frames are about 2/3 full of honey. Do they always start on the central frames or can there sometimes work on the outside ones first?
This bloke started off with a nuc. A couple of weeks ago, the bees hardly touched the empty frames, now they’re full & I think he’s ready to put the Flow super on.
The hive that swarmed was my son’s hive in Caboolture.
It sounds like your bees are on a real honey flow. If the Flow super is full of bees, they will work on all the frames concurrently. Sometimes they’ll work on the center frames first, then work towards the outsides. It’s best to physically inspect the Flow frames before harvest, because you can’t always tell by looking through the viewing windows.
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Yeah will do that Jeff thanks for the advice.
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Sigh 
I just love success stories.