BEE HARVESTING

BEE HARVESTING

Most common honey harvesting seasons / months are: March – August and December. Evening hours are the best time to harvest honey. Farmers should have time to monitor progress of development of combs in the beehives. This will ensure that they harvest at the right time when the combs have fully matured.

In Malawi the commonly used beehives are the top bar/ Malawian standard beehives. A farmer is expected to harvest about 35Kgs of honey or more per hive depending on care given.

During harvesting do the following

• Assemble all materials needed during the harvesting process. Open the hives carefully and start removing the combs. Separate combs into different containers basing on color and maturity of honey. This ensures product uniformity and consistency which is desired by the consumers on the market.
• During harvesting, at least 2 people are required per beehive who do the following:

• First person is a smoker holder, and is the first one to reach the beehive and smoke it before opening and when opening, sometimes even when harvesting though it depends on the activeness of the bees.
• The other person opens the beehives and start harvesting while the smoker holder monitors the activeness of the bees.

Harvest in all top bars with matured honey and leave immature ones. If the whole hive has matured combs then leave 2 to 3 combs to avoid the colony leaving the hive. The number of beehives harvested per day depends on the number of harvesters and materials available.