Earliest harvest

All quiet on my blogging front for a few days because amongst other things I've been busy extracting -- or trying to extract fast-crytallising oil seed rape honey. I've never extracted so much (healthy bees, too much oil seed rape!) so early in the year (good weather). I'm beginning to sound like a real farmer -- grumbling about the harvest whatever it is.

OSR is a pain! As it crystallises, it won't spin out or, if it does, it clogs filters. I know I could melt down the combs in a pratley tray, but I'm reluctant to do that because I hate over-heating my honey.

I tried Bee-Quick for the first time to clear the supers. It worked quite well, but next time I'll know to brush the bottom of the supers before loading them into the car -- bees run away from the almond-like smell of Bee-Quick but a lot gather at the bottom of the super frames. Fortunately, there were not too many neighbours around when I offloaded honey -- and quite a few bees -- from the car at home.