1) If using a "chasse abeille", a sort of one-way passage between the top box and the hive, put this in place the evening before.
2) Chose a good day, not stormy, or oppressive
3) Get to the hive in the morning in preference, 2nd choice is the evening - avoid the heat of the afternoon.
4) Have the right equipment - you'll need a spare top box, with empty frames, and a damp sack cloth, or old towel to cover the honey filled frames.
5) Use smoke to limit the bees activity, make sure your smoke machine is well primed, and send smoke to "push" the bees back into the hive. Stand behind the hive, brush bees off each frame you collect, and you can smoke the frames too.
6) check any uncapped honey combs - give them a shake - recently stocked nectar will spray out like water, but any that is syrupy and stays within the comb can be collected along with the sealed combs.
7) Place any frames to be harvested in the empty spare top box, and replace with new, empty frames. Limit the frames to 8 in th top box, for ease of collecting honey filled combs. Otherwise you could damage the combs trying to pull the frames out and get sticky honey everywhere.
Raymond also warned that the amount of honey in the top box can vary quite quickly, as bees will move honey from the hive in spring, to free cells for the queen to lay eggs, and in autumn will move it back, to have food stores close by over the winter months, when egg laying slows down again.
Jan showed us her stash of frozen pollen - collected from 2 hives in about 10 days - an impressive amount, and it tasted much nicer than dried pollen too ! When using a pollen trap, you shoud collect the pollen every day, or at least every 48h, otherwise it can go mouldy quickly. Once collected it either has to be dried, or frozen straight away.
We also discussed the idea that putting a pair of strong magnets on the outside opposing walls of the hive can increase the bees honey production - over 2 years Raymond has seen a 10% increase in yield from hives with magnets. Why ? What does it do to the bees ? Are there any other effects?
So many questions !
Afterwards we kitted up, and checked the state of the hives, moved some bees into a small "ruchette", saw how the pollen was collected, and checked the amount of honey in the top boxes.