First Honey Harvest! | Healthy Home Economist

How and when to harvest your first batch of raw honey and honeycomb from a backyard beehive.

I wanted to share with you a picture along with the details of my first raw honey harvest as a novice backyard beekeeper.

The honey of course included the delicious honeycomb, a healthy natural chewing gum.

Timing

Harvesting honey from my own backyard hive was not an overnight success by any means.

My first colony was established in March 2023, so it took over a year for the hive to grow to the point where extracting some honey could even be considered.

In other words, it is unwise to remove honey from a colony that is newly established, small, struggling, or otherwise not thriving and bursting at the seams with enough honey, nectar, and pollen to support itself.

The honey with honeycomb in the photo above came from one frame that met the criteria for availability for the beekeeper to take.

How to Harvest Honey

The process of harvesting the honey was quite easy.

I simply brushed off the few bees that were on the honey frame and brought it into the kitchen.

Then, I carefully scraped the honey with intact honeycomb into a large bowl as you can see above.

The honey with the comb will be stored in a glass bowl with a secure lid in the pantry.

After the honey was removed from the frame, I placed it on the patio propped up on the side of a chair so both sides were easily accessible.

The patio is not far from the hive, so the bees easily discovered it and quickly began the clean-up of any sticky remnants.

Once cleaned by the bees (which will only take a day!), the frame can be put back in the hive.

I preferred to have the bees clean the frame away from the hive as opposed to putting it immediately back in (the bees will clean it wherever you put it!).

The reason is that a frame with some loose honey would risk some dripping down to the bottom of the hive and attracting wax moths…a dreaded infestation that I have had problems with this season.

While there are other techniques for harvesting honey that work well too, this is a very simple and straightforward approach for a small harvest.

Hopefully, this is the first of many more to come!

Learn More About Backyard Beekeeping

If you would like to read more about my adventures as a backyard beekeeper, the growing list of articles is under the backyard beekeeping category.