So I estimated my first harvest (or as I’ve now heard it called – “robbing”) would happen in early November. The beauty of living in sunny sub-tropical Brisbane, is that I had to revise that estimate and organise for the virgin honey virgin harvest to happen last weekend due to a bee explosion and a good honey flow in my area.

So it was with much excitement, a few litres of Margarita to lubricate the workers, and much hilarity that good friends Nadine (@madamehoneybee), Natalie and her daughter Eva and I extracted the first honey from my hives.

While I thought we would be taking 4 frames from H1/A (Hive 1/Honey Box A), I only had 3 truly full frames, so it was agreed to leave the girls with the 4th frame.

The fun of extraction was completed rather hazily on Saturday night, but it wasn’t until late yesterday that I had time to bottle my wares. From the 3 frames, we extracted 7kgs of honey – approximately 2.3kg per frame. In no way a record weight but for my first ever extraction I was delighted! While it was not white clover which would have been too much to ask for, the honey is a beautiful light colour and quite floral.

If anyone has been eagerly waiting for a taste, I’m afraid that the virgin harvest has been accounted for. It saddened me to have to put aside a small sample for quality control (as pictured below). The good news is that the 3 Flow frames will be ready for harvest in about 2 weeks and I am really looking forward to that. I suspect that that will be a more populated extracting party than Saturday night as there are many who are interested to see if and how it all works!

PS: Yes there were photos taken whilst we extracted but will not be posted to this “family friendly” site. We discovered a new drinking sensation of one sip of Margarita (from a salt rimmed glass) to one finger-full of honey. It is the bees knees! xx