Second Honey Harvest

For our second honey harvest, we enlisted some happy helpers (Thanks Cliff, Emma, and Russel!) It was a good thing too, since we were harvesting 40 medium frames of honey on a weeknight. Here is happy helper, Emma, holding a full frame of honey:

Here are Russel and Emma decapping some frames:

I think this process may have convinced me to get an extractor of my own for next year, just so that I can have it when I need it. I wasn't really expecting to need to harvest a second time, so the extractor that I borrow from the Beekeepers' Guild of San Mateo County was booked every weekend. Overall we got about 7 gallons of honey, the process took pretty much all night, even with the 5 of us working on it. We also got a lot of wax from the cappings and burr comb:

Dancing Bees?

I was taking a look at the bees today, it was another very hot summer day so there were a lot of bees bearding around the front of the hive. There were a lot more around the entrance of the Mint hive. The bees on the front porch seemed to be fanning to cool the hive down, but I'm not sure what these bees on the side are doing (rapidly moving their front legs). Dancing perhaps?