Extracting actually began several weeks ago. But between queen orders, the county fair, physically getting the honey off the hives and into the honey house for extraction and the labor day weekend I really haven’t had the time to extract much. I’m probably only a 3rd done and I should have been done by last weekend.
My honey house is actually my 3 car garage (a pole building). It is far from air tight but that hasn’t caused any problems in past years. However, this year the bees found their way in. Lots of them, everywhere. Probably several swarms worth were hanging from the lights, at the windows and just about everywhere else. Many more managed to get into the extractor (I think the cover was ajar) and got stuck in the honey that had to be cleaned out before we could extract any more. In the past I had always put out some extracted supers to attract their attention. This is not really a recommended practice as it does carry some risk of spreading American Foul Brood spores. So this year I didn’t put out wet supers as bait. Big Mistake. So I put out wet supers last evening and hopefully it will be enough to keep most of them away from the garage. Even so, all tanks and the extractor were closed and covered with sheets to keep the bees out of them. It won’t keep them out of the unextracted honey supers, but it should alleviate the biggest problem.
