A Honey of a Weekend

Well, it was, literally. There's about 85 kilos of silvertop honey in the settling tank in my tool shed and, importantly, I now have several supers of sticky combs to give back to the bees to clean up.
The candied honey in the stickies, which annoys beekeepers because it won't come out in the extractor, will be eaten by the bees as they clean up the combs in readiness for storing the next surplus they gather. For readers who have no knowledge of extracting honey, a honey extractor spins like the spin dryer of a washing machine, using centrifugal force to throw the liquid honey to the wall of the machine where it falls by gravity to the bottom. It is then drained out, into a bucket in my case, or into a sump from where it is pumped to a large settling tank in the case of the more serious beekeeper. Honey candied solid will not spin out. Honey semi-solid comes out partially and slowly, and the grains or crystals in it triggers all the honey to start candying in the tank.
I removed the honey from the hives on Saturday. Pleasant work on a warm, sunny day with a good lick of honey coming in so the bees were happy, not even slightly aggressive. I've noticed blackberries flowering on my morning walk and the peppermints are heavy with blossom. Peppermint doesn't usually yield honey in this area, but in an 'on' honey year like this one promises to be, it just might. The shake of nectar round the brood was sweet and light. Blackberry, I thought.
When I looked at the bees two weeks earlier two of the hives had no brood except for a small amount of eggs, yet they were strong colonies with no sign of having swarmed (reduced poulation, empty swarm queen cells). This was unusual and made me think they must have superceded their queen, both at the same time, and a new queen had commenced to lay in the last few days. It takes three days for an egg to hatch and become a small larva. What had me mystified was that usually the old queen keeps laying until the new one gets going so there is brood there of all stages up to 21 days old, which is how long it takes from the queen laying the egg till the young bee emerges from it's cell. The brood pattern is usually poor because the old queen is running out of gas, or spermatoza if you like it technical.
This time in these two hives, it was obvious a new young queen was off and running with large expanding brood nests of excellent pattern, but as yet no hatching bees. Another hive was strong, queenright, and had not swarmed, and the fourth was the one that had swarmed, the parent of the swarm I caught in my neighbour's rubbish heap. It was a dischevelled roar of queenlessness. I suspect it's virgin queen has not mated successfully, but I'll give it a little more time before uniting it with one of the others, which I may do anyway. I don't want my hive numbers to get higher, it's too much work. The swarm, which I had taken to my friends Mark and Jane's garden, had drawn out the box of foundation into beautiful new white combs, always satisfying to see, with the old queen laying hell for leather, right out to the combs at the edge.
I stacked the supers of honey in my cleaned out shed. All my tools etc will reside for now in the woodshed, which won't be required for wood till the autumn. A bee proof shed is advisable or the bees will come to get their honey back while you are extracting. A friend gave me an old glasshouse heater recently and I left this on overnight to keep the honey warm so it would extract more easily. It blew warm air under the supers, which I'd raised up on bricks, allowing the warmth to rise up through the honey combs.
Sunday morning was spent bringing the extractor and tanks from the other shed where they've been stored since I last extracted nearly two years ago, (last year was very poor and there was no surplus) and cleaning and setting it all up. After lunch I was into it, and despite slicing my thumb once with the uncapping knife, by 5 o'clock I was inside doing the vegetables to go with our roast lamb for the evening meal and enjoying a beer.
The next job is to transfer the honey, which has been through a coarse strainer on top of tank 1, bucket by bucket, through a finer strainer tied to the top of tank 2. I usually warm each bucket of honey in a hot water bath in the laundry trough so that it goes through the strainer easier. It's tedious. I'll be at it during the week in the evenings. Commercial packing operations heat the honey substantially to pump it through a fine strainer, and to give the honey a longer shelf life before it candies. My honey, having minimal heat, usually candies quickly. This isn't a bad thing. The more heat applied the more honey enzymes are destroyed.
It's a fairly strong honey in flavour, mainly silvertop, a eucalypt (E.sieberi), that grows in this area. On my morning walks during October I saw white blossom in the treetops on the hill to the east, and I knew it was silvertop flowering because there were numerous of them close to the road when I drove to Pakenham. It's a distinctive tree, with dark, deep furrowed bark like an ironbark on the trunk, and smooth white bark with a silvery bloom on the upper branches. When I was near the hives in October their heavy flight path was towards the blossom in the east. The nuisance candied honey, old overwintered honey, was not used by the bees in early spring breeding as it would be normally, because of the available nectar from the silvertop and the fine, settled weather.
I don't usually extract honey here before Christmas. This season's looks like it could be a bumper crop, if the budding on the messmate and manna and grey gum is an indication. That's why I'm happy to have this extract behind me and have the empty boxes to put back on the bees. The hope is they'll fill 'em up again. Some of the messmates are into heavy leaf growth on top of the flower buds which can be a bad sign, but we'll soon find out.
By the way, it has rained 28 ml overnight and it's raining outside now. This follows about 30ml ten days ago. A bit of good weather now could make the blackberry kick. The hives may fill a box before the messmate starts. And even if they don't, I'm looking forward to picking fresh blackberries in February at the outcrops along Quinn Rd. when I walk.