CLUB HONEY . .

Summer is definately over down here in the Antipodes, Autumn and all her glory has arrived and I for one, am very pleased !

We extracted the honey from the club hives a couple of weeks ago, I am President of the Waikato Domestic Beekeepers Assoc, plus librarian and news letter editor. I really enjoy working with the older members of the club who have been beekeeping for generations, they have so much to teach. About 9 of us turned up on a beautiful morning to take the honey off the hives of which one of them had 8 supers on ! (see above pic) An hour or so later there were thousands of annoyed bees everywhere, I wasn`t worried as we were all kitted up in protective gear and no one was stung. I had the regal job of brushing bees of frames and filling the empty boxes with loads of delicious capped honey. We also added the Bayvarol strips, 2 in each hive for the treatment of varroa mite, these will be taken out in 6 weeks. The hives are on a farm on the outskirts of the city, they seem to do well on the clover, barberry hedges and large country gardens .

Afew days later at the monthly meeting, more of us gathered at one of the member`s homewhere the supers had been taken, (Roger has a large shed which is ideal for the messy job of extraction) for an evening of uncapping, extraction and friendly banter ! I can`t remember how much honey we ended up with, about twelve 20 litre buckets I think - all of which will be sold.

This is a great learning exercise for the newer members of the club, real hands-on stuff ! The evening finished with cups of tea and biccies.