The bees have been working hard and it was time to extract.
I was luckily enough to get a 6 frame radial extractor from my father as a birthday present so it was time to test it out.
The kitchen was prepared with a lot of newspaper.
There were 16 capped frames from the one hive and 14 from the other. The rest of the partially capped or very wet frames were left for the bees in another super made up with extra frames of foundation.
It wasn't quite as messy as we expected. Our friend Carrie came round to help and was a dab hand at taking off the cappings. I had made up a wooden spreader bar with a hole in it to support the frames over a washing up bowl which seemed to work well.
Once we had finished we ended up with 48lb or 48 jars of honey.
Pretty good I think for our first year bee keeping. We now need to make sure the bees are well prepared for the winter. One hive has fairly high Varroa levels so time to treat.
Friends and family will be the main beneficiaries of the honey this year I suspect.