Honey Harvest.

It was a struggle, but yesterday I took honey off the two of my four hives that have any. One colony had about 10 pounds and was easy, while the other had a full box of the stuff which means there’s probably about fifty pounds of extractable honey, plus the weight of that which won’t centrifuge out, the wax and the woodwork. That was too heavy for me to carry a hundred yards over rough ground to the car so I separated it into two boxes.
 
The light material over the honey cells is the wax capping that the bees put on to seal the honey so that it doesn’t absorb moisture and start to ferment, this is the only frame in the box that isn’t fully capped but, if it wasn’t Mono Monday you’d be able to see the rich amber colour against the nearly white wax. The wood is discoloured by the bees walking on it and coating it with propolis (a sort of antiseptic polyfilla) and the fact that I scorched it to kill any pathogens last winter. Each box contains eleven of these frames, in this one, nine are fully sealed, this one is sealed on the other side and ready to be finished on this side while the last frame is virtually empty. It is no co-incidence that this colony has needed the most feeding over the last year (about thirty kilos of sugar) and is the only one out of three to give a reasonable crop, in fact I was feeding it up until a month ago. I’m also pleased that this colony is headed by the queen that I bred this year.
 
It is now the  start of the beekeeping year and so time to start feeding again ready for the winter.

The extra is the colour version.
 
I’ve just posted “Saskia” from the 13th of September.

Thanks are due to Ingeborg for hosting today's MonoMonday challenge and the theme is "Seasonal."