To open and extract frames
Wear a bee suite and gloves
- Use a smoker - puff some smoke in front of your entrance to calm the bees.
- Open the hive with the hive tool, the bees will have sealed the hive with propolis. You will need to break the propolis seal.
- Puff some more smoke to calm the bees.
- Grab and lift the frames up with a frame grip
- Brush the bees off of the frames with a bee brush or shake the frames to get the bees off.
- Don’t remove frames until you are ready to harvest the honey. Let the bees maintain the honey.
- If a number of frames are full of capped honey, it’s time to harvest