We were really thrilled to have a completely capped super ready to harvest recently. I was especially excited as I was eager to try out my birthday present – an extractor!

The wax cappings have to be scraped away before loading the frames into the extractor.

Look at those golden droplets flying out of the wax combs.

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Running the honey out of the extractor, into the filter. Once the honey had been filtered we left it to settle before bottling it.

The finished product.

We’ve had some fun designing labels. A came up with a couple of her own designs.

She was feeling enterprising, so set up a little stall on our drive. Of course the honey with her labels outsold mine!

It is useful to have at least two colonies of bees – one can be used to “help” the other if there are any problems. Once we had got our new bees settled this spring I had my eyes out for another colony. I was very excited to hear about a swarm in Kentish Town late one night that needed collection. I kept my fingers crossed that they would stay put over night and went down there at the crack of dawn to see if I could retrieve them.

They were still there – tightly clustered about 8 feet up in a tree.

After a bit of ladder climbing and tree shaking most of them were happily getting into the nuc. Later, after dark I went back to pick up the nuc. There weren’t any bees about then, but when I put my ear to the box I could hear a reassuring buzz.

Since then the colony has built up steadily, and has recently given us our first capped honey of the season.