Bountiful Bees of Broad Street

08/11/2026

08/09/2026

Spring 2026 honey now being harvested and bottled

Using the USDA Pfund Scale a sample was graded as "extra light anber".
August Herman Pfund was a physicist at John's Hopkins who devised this scale based on comparing honey samples against an image of honey ranging from light to dark.
One device mimics this by using two wavelengths of light ch pass through a honey sample and measures how much light passes through the sample.
This removes a significant amount of subjectivity in Pfund's original device as different people perceive honey colors differently.

07/31/2026

Drained and cleaned my bottling tank. There was honey at the very bottom that had some wax fragments that I didnt want to re-strain. Added a bit of water then tried feeding it back to a hive in the Borough community garden At first they seemed uninterested but then they drained it in a day.

All gone. This is truly recycling - especially since I havent pulled honey from this hive yet.

07/31/2026

The bees will clean it up. Ill add a feeder tank and combine it with any strong hive that is only in one deep

07/30/2026

Pulling honey: a full super poised on tripod supported lazy susan. Ready to blow any remaining bees out and move it onto the back of the pickup.

The hive on the right sits under a fan driven fume board creating a gentle flow of a special compound the odor of which drives most of bees down and out from the super. The super is then placed on the lazy susan pictured in the first image and any remaining bees are blown out (these will re-enter the hive).
The hive on the left has a syrup feeder refilled with up to 1 gallon in each box, and a miticide treatment (Apiguard) had been applied. The white shim is added so the Apiguard will be exposed to the air and the bees will also carry it throughout the hive. Treatment will be repeated in 14 days.

07/26/2026

That steady hum is the extractor basket spinning 20 uncapped frames of honey. You can see bits of beeswax in the honey flowing out from the extractor - these are strained out before the honey is bottled.
I will slowly build up the rotation speed of the basket ( variable speed motor installed by ) and run the extractor for perhaps 35-45 minutes- until the honey essentially stops flowing. Takes slightly more time at colder ambient temperatures.
This will take a couple of weeks!

07/26/2026

Two honey combs- the difference here is not really the color or grade of honey but rather the manner with which the bees built the wax caps on the top of the cells of ripened honey.
The lighter comb appears lighter because the wax caps are added by the bees with a tiny layer of air under the caps and above the honey. These are sometimes called "dry caps". The fresh beeswax appears almost white.
The darker comb exhibits "wet caps" where the wax cap has no pocket of air under it and is in direct contact with the honey.
Some bees build wet caps, some build dry caps. The darker comb has mostly wet caps with has a few dry caps scattered about.
Remember the honey bee queen mates with 25-30 drones on her mating flight so the worker bee population will have some genetic variation which explains the mix of wet and dry caps on ripened honey.
My thanks to my friend !