Our first harvest was a great success!! All the frames in the super were laden with honey and were well capped, so we removed two of the centre frames for harvesting.

Brushing the bees off a frame of capped honey

We used a very simple drainage system- the top bucket has a large hole through which the honey drains through a filter and into the bottom bucket which has a tap in the bottom.

Bucket honey draining system

After scraping the capping off, we let the honey drain for at least 24 hours, then poured it into jars. These first two frames gave us 2.3 litres of honey!

Once each frame had drained, we returned it to the super for the bees to tidy and rebuild! As our super was so full of honey, we also added an empty super for them to move in to.