Coleene E. Davidson said:

> I pulled honey this morning using Fischer's Bee-Quick...
> ...I found the product to work quite well.

> ...I will make a point to remove supers Before there is as
> much burr comb as I encountered this year

Getting bees to leave recently-broken-open burr comb is
second in difficulty only to getting bees to abandon brood.

If one cannot harvest early or often enough to avoid burr comb
construction, here's a suggestion that might make the harvesting
process less messy, and not add the difficulty of trying to get bees
to "abandon" dripping honey from broken burr comb:

        Go out to the hives a few days before harvest
        and break apart each super from the other by
        about 1/2 inch.  One can accomplish this with
        the "crowbar end" of the "paint-scraper style"
        hive tool.

        As an alternative, one can avoid the wear and tear
        on one's woodenware by using a violin string attached
        to two ad-hoc handles as a "saw", pulling it between
        supers with a sawing motion to cut the burr comb.
        One wants to move slowly in this effort, since it is
        assumed that one would rather not kill bees in the
            process.  One could just as well use one of the thinner
        metal guitar strings if one is a firm believer in non-violins.  :)

        After a day or so, the bees should have all the honey from
        the broken burr comb cleaned up, and your harvesting
        is that much easier and cleaner.

Of course, the better approach is to harvest early and harvest often.
I dunno about you, but I had people calling as early as May, all
asking about when I was going to harvest my "spring comb honey".
[Insert blatant plug promoting Ross Rounds here.]  I follow the lead
of the wineries, and date-stamp my retail honey with the date of harvest
and apiary location.  While we all know that honey can "keep" for years,
people seem to like the idea of recently-harvested honey.  It also allows
people to better identify what they like with a "vintage" of sorts.

        jim

        farmageddon