I still had a medium hive body with 10 frames that I brought inside last spring after my hives died out. I went through it and I found it was about 3/4 full of honey. My goal is to provide plenty of honey to the two nucs of local bees I got in the spring. I use foundation-less frames so any of the frames that had cross-combing, broken or not centered in the frame, leaving only the best comb. I only ended up cutting out part of most of the frames.
I got a steam table pan as it is a good size to cut the comb into. I’m finding that if I cut each side of the comb in half length-wise, in effect cutting each cell in half and allowing the honey to drain out.
I use the crush and strain method of harvesting honey. So this mashed up comb and honey goes into the top of my bottling bucket. There is a mesh strainer that sits in the top that allows the honey to go through and keeps the wax and other stuff in the top and I scoop that out. I still need to work out the best way to process the wax. I suspect there is still some honey and I don’t know if I should just heat up all of it and let it separate and then strain any honey. There is some old brood comb in there and I don’t want that crud in my honey or wax. If it was all fresh comb I wouldn’t worry about heating it up until the wax melts and then letting it separate naturally. Something to figure out in the winter.
I also added a small entrance with a metal disk that I can change from open to workers only to vented. I also made a new cover out of 2″ x 10″ lumber. If you have some pesky birds affecting your set up, check out this anti bird netting service in London. With a bit of help you can get those birds less interested in your honey bees.
Below is a quick video I shot after I added the hive body to the stack.