Honey Harvest

The other day I took off the honey supers, a couple of weeks early because when I added the new brood super it had new foundation, so I split it up among the three supers to give them time to draw out the comb and get ready for winter. Bringing the supers and equipment down and back this year was easier, thanks to a friend who gave us a garden cart. I did some work on it and it now doubles as a bee cart. I extracted the honey today, we had two supers of shallow frames and four medium frames we took off earlier in the year to see if we can get a different tasting honey than what we would get at then end of the season. I had four honey supers but only two were full and the other two were light. They still had to draw out the comb this year, next year it will be better, like this is mush better than last year. Last year I estimated we got 14 lbs from two colonies, this year 68 lbs from four colonies. As for the taste test, I sampled a lot today and couldn't tell, I'll have to wait for ReBecca to do the official test.

Bee/garden cart.

Bee escape they are still escaping.

Lots of bees to go into the winter with.

Getting ready to spin out the honey.

Wax and honey everywhere.

Four shallow frames fit perfectly.

Six gallons of honey.

Out golden nector.

The Big Split

On the 22nd we split the two colonies we had, now we have four. They came out of winter strong in three supers, we split each into two brood boxes for the summer, And we didn't mix the colonies when splitting, just in case we didn't see the Queen and end up putting two Queens in the same hive. This would be very bad. They were very strong and tons of bees as you can see in the pictures below. When checked today if there were Queen cells in the new colonies, it was a hit and miss. The first one didn't have any Queen cells but I did see new eggs and very early development of some larva, which means I moved the Queen over when splitting them. The colony that we split if from turned out to have a frame with Queen cells, but when I pulled up the frame it pulled apart two cells, so we put it back and usually there is more than one frame with Queen cells. The next new colony had one frame with four Queen cells on it, we put it back carefully and will leave it until next weekend, It takes 16 days for a Queen to develop. Earlier in the week we put honey supers on the largest colonies to try and get dandelion honey, it is slow going. There were several frames in the brood boxes full of honey, so I know it's there, just a matter of time.

Lot of honey in this frame.

Loaded with bees.

You can see it's full.

Packed.

Hard to see, but it's wall to wall bees.

A healthy frame.

Just pouring over the sides.

After the split.

A warm day, I took out the bottom board insert for ventilation.

I added screened inner cover and will let the bees take there
time leaving the old inner cover.

All colonies are busy today.

Our little honey maker at work.

Three Queen cells, hopefully one will live.

A New Year

I took off the winter wrap a while ago and feed and medicated them last month. Today wanted to have a look at how they are doing and get ready to split them in a couple of weeks. Earlier I put down another patio stone so I'll be ready for four colonies. I only looked a couple of frames from each super, it was a bit breezy and only 15°C, I didn't want to disturb them too much. They were laying brood in between the supers, so I cleaned that out, they looked good, and very plentiful. This I hope is a sign of a health Queen. The frames had brood in the middle, with some pollen and honey on the outside, as it should be. They were busy and a bit aggravated at what was going on, and rightly so, but they weren't aggressive, thankfully. Here are a couple of pictures of who this years little crew.