Hi, I’m Stewart Spinks and welcome to Episode 121 of my podcast, Beekeeping Short and Sweet. Ah the sweet smell of Summer honey, it’s extraction time here at the Norfolk honey company so stay tuned to hear about our process and kit we use to make the job as easy as possible.

Do take a look at the extra content available on my patreon page, that’s www.patreon.com/norfolkhoney

I’m grateful to Honey Paw hives for sponsoring in part our podcasts for this season. Honey Paw hives are, as I’m sure you’re aware, Poly Langstroth hives and we’re setting up an apiary full of their hives this season courtesy of Honey Paw. Check out their range of hives and other equipment on their website, I’ll leave a link to their website in the show notes as usual.

Honey Paw Hives - Designed by Beekeepers, For Beekeepers.

Welcome back to another weekly instalment of our beekeeping antics, it’s been a tough physical week with all the usual lifting and moving of honey supers as we take off the Summer honey crop, I’m glad to say my back seems to be holding up well at the moment, famous last words of course but I’m doing all I can to protect it and starting to put together some neat but simple bits of kit to help take the strain out of the process.

It’s been another whirlwind week, clearer boards on, supers off, clearer boards on, supers off. I have a feeling this Summers crop is going to be way down on what I might have expected if we hadn’t split colonies again, it’s also been a very dry Summer again for us here in Norfolk and despite having lots of apiaries near rivers and lakes the bees really seem to have struggled with building up larger surpluses of honey.

So the honey room is finally in action, I’d have to say it’s still a work in progress, I’m not totally convinced of the exact layout but this week has allowed me to get a fairly decent workflow going without the constant need to move things around, lift heavy boxes and generally make it more work that it needs to be...........

.......I may have found the perfect tool for the job for me. As with most of these tools there are pros and cons and the first thing to say about the honey paw slit uncapper is it isn’t cheap. The same can be  said or the Fritz brush uncapper but if you have a lot of supers to extract it’s worth the investment.

So the slit uncapper is a hollow cast, block of aluminium attached to a handle. It has an inlet and outlet fitting on the back to which you attach a couple of hoses, one coming from a steam unit and the other running to a sink or drain bucket.

I have now secured a supply of Autumn bee feed called Apikel, it’s a heavy syrup that I’ve used before and I import it direct from the manufacturer. I still like and use the Apimix from Modern Beekeeping but having an additional option always makes sense.

It comes in the usual sizes, the most convenient for beekeepers being the 14kg plastic can. The biggest issue with syrup is the cost of transporting it and it almost makes it prohibitively expensive. 

The bees really like the stuff and it gets them nicely prepared with stores for the Winter. If you’d like some please do send me a message either via Patreon or my website contact page. 

Time’s up for another week, I’m back to the unit to extract some more honey, Please do take a look at the extra content available on my patreon page, that’s www.patreon.com/norfolkhoney

 I’m Stewart Spinks

And that was Beekeeping Short and Sweet