Honey harvest

I put Apiguard on my London hives today (half load on the nuc). I put in entrance reducers and slid in the varroa boards, jamming them tight up to the bottom of the mesh floor to keep all the thymol goodness in as much as possible. In two weeks time I'll apply the second batch.

The excitement of the day came with the honey harvest. One full super yielded about 25lb of honey. My extractor is rubbish. It came as part of a "budget" package with lots of other kit from Thornes. Extracting even one super in the cheap tangential extractor took quite a while with all the faffing with frames and the dodgy handle, though the length of time may have been something to do with the six kids who were "helping" (I like to get mine and their friends involved in this type of thing for their interest). The honey did not come out very clear. I strained it through two different sieves (course and fine) in the same way I did last year, which had previously yielded beautifully clear honey, but this year was not nearly so good. Perhaps it'll clarify over time as the tiny bubbles rise to the top, and maybe I should have left it to settle more before bottling. Anyhow, it tastes beautiful. I'll be popping out to my other hive tomorrow (when the weather clears) to apply varroa and take a super or two off that hive. Between now and then I'll mostly be de-stickying the kitchen!