Ben showing nice laying pattern on a frame with capped honey on the outside and top.
Well, so much has happened since my last post so I'll try to do a quick recap of what's been going on. We consulted with Ben Crawley on May 10th to help us determine exactly what was happening with our bees. We increased from 3 hives to 8 over two months because of the swarming and our catching the swarms. Craig made several trips to Busy Bee Apiary to pick up extra hive boxes and frames to have available for the splitting and swarming. Ben was a tremendous help and he marked the queen in each hive. We learned that we have some strong hives, with only one needing a bit of help with feeding. We also learned that we needed to take some honey to make space for more honey while it was flowing. While Ben was here to help with working the hives, we cleaned off comb and cut down queen cells in a couple of frames. The three hours spent with him was well worth the cost because we learned so much about where we stand at this point. 
Equipment in these pictures.
A couple days after getting deep into the hives, Craig and Jim drove to Brushy Mountain in North Wilkesboro to get the extractor and the decapping bin. We were ready for taking our first honey. That weekend, we put on our gear, got our smoker ready and went forth to take some frames of full honey. Craig had plenty of replacement frames ready to put into the hives. We had a plastic bin with a lid and each fully capped frame of honey that we took from the hive had to be brushed to remove the bees. They didn't always agree with the process and we got a few stings on our hands. Once the honey laden frame was placed in the bin, we quickly capped the bin and moved on to the next frame. In all, we took 14 frames of honey which resulted in about 4 gallons of honey. The process went smoothly and I really enjoyed taking off the caps and Craig enjoyed running the extractor. The pictures below will give further details. 
