Wednesday August 6, 2008
I made a quick trip out to the hives today on my lunch hour ... I was able to drive out to the Farm, 10 miles east of work, put on the bee suit, crank up the smoker, and install 3 supers on the hives and then get back to work ... One hive now has 1 hive body and 4 regular supers. The other has 2 hive bodies, 2 regular supers and 1 ross round super. 4 of the supers are full of honey. The next project will be to get use of an extractor and take off some of this excess honey for my use. It has been rainy most of the week, but today was hot with blue skies. The bee of both hives were mostly agreeable ... a few flying kamakazis, but overall pretty tame. Until next time ... bee well!
Wednesday, August 6, 2008
Friday, August 1, 2008
Its Time for some Honey!
I had the opportunity to get out to my hives briefly on the last two days of July. The purpose of my visits were to prepare and get off the Ross Rounds Super which I believed would be near near full with honey and capped. On the 30th I worked the southern of 2 hives (one hive body and 4 supers). I removed the telescoping cover and the inner cover. Below this was a regular-sized super and below that my Ross Rounds super. After much prying with my hive tool to loosen and separate the supers, I switched positions of these 2 supers, placing the regular super on top of the other 2 regular supers. I placed the bee excluder/inner cover on next and then the Ross Round super at the top and replaced the telescoping cover. I hoped that after 24 hours most of the bees would have vacated the Ross Rounds super, so I could remove it from the hive. During this visit I did see one hive beetle surrying along the top of the inner cover and a few very small ants along the super edges.
I returned to the hive on the 31st and successfully removed the Ross Rounds super. It still had a few bees remaining, but not as many as the day before. I placed the super in the shade and allowed most of the remaining bees to escape.
In the evening my daugther and I processed the super. 6 of 8 frames were full and capped. The remaining 2 frames were close to complete, but not capped with a small amount of comb still needing drawn out on one side of a couple of rounds. I left these 2 frames alone and will return them with the other 6 frames empty and with new foundation. In all we were able to get 24 - 1/2 lbs rounds of comb honey. It was quite excited to take our first honey and the efforts of my bees is greatly appreciated. Its been a long time and since childhood that I had comb honey. Sweet and delicious!
I returned to the hive on the 31st and successfully removed the Ross Rounds super. It still had a few bees remaining, but not as many as the day before. I placed the super in the shade and allowed most of the remaining bees to escape.
In the evening my daugther and I processed the super. 6 of 8 frames were full and capped. The remaining 2 frames were close to complete, but not capped with a small amount of comb still needing drawn out on one side of a couple of rounds. I left these 2 frames alone and will return them with the other 6 frames empty and with new foundation. In all we were able to get 24 - 1/2 lbs rounds of comb honey. It was quite excited to take our first honey and the efforts of my bees is greatly appreciated. Its been a long time and since childhood that I had comb honey. Sweet and delicious!
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