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I finished processing the 2023 honey crop.
This year I did a lot of testing and I think I'm learning some things. I ran 2 yards, one had 10 hives, the other had up to 25, but we've lost 7 of those so far this summer. Due to last year's losses, all by 7-9(can't remember) were new. These were spits, swarms, purchased nucs from varies bee suppliers. I tested Italian Cordovan queens(dismal failure) saskatraz, some others as well. I split all of them up between both yards and tried to place each producer, my own and queen options together. It was an odd year and I'm not sure what to think on some, because no supplier really dominated. Each had 1-2 hives that were very good, some that were average and lost/failed one.
I also purchased a simple harmony farms uncapper that was about $400 to try. You'll see it in the video I'm going to post. It definitely was much faster in the uncapping process, but I had so much small wax in the honey that it constantly plugged the filter when I was bucketing it. Next year, I'll add another layer of strainer to catch more of the wax earlier in the process but overall it was ok. Doesn't work well on thick comb, doesn't work well on thin comb. My recommendation is in the air until i've used it more.
Results...as always I'm not happy because I have higher expectations. the 10 hive yard was within 40lbs of the 25 hive yard(home). I'll have about 60 frames of comb honey as well as the raw.
I still have mite treatments and I think I'm going to start 1 yard with formic pro and then finish with OA vapor. The other I think I'll just do OA and see what happens. To save time, I think I'm going to splurge and purchase a lorab battery vaporizer which is about $500 but if it saves me 2-3hrs per treatment and i have to do 4-5 treatments this fall and more in the summer, it's worth it in reclaiming my time.
I tried to put together a short video of the process. I know I'm not good at this but i think it shows you a lot of the process.
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