Some Progress

One hive has about four frames of capped honey. I removed one frame and extracted the honey. One hive has some comb started in the supper which is a good sign. The original hive has nothing going on in the super. The upper and lower brood boxes appear ok.

Discouraging

Very little build up in any of the six hives. Talked with Graham yesterday and he said that he's having the same problem/issue...bees not pulling comb which means that there's no honey flow. This is probably due to the extensive rains that we had for a three week, non-stop period. We have missed the early honey flow and are now keeping fingers crossed for mid to late July.

Clem emailed me yesterday and said that he has one hive that has already produced 1.5 supers full of honey! What a difference a few miles makes because Mollie is experiencing the same thing we are.

Have begun feeding again with a 1 part sugar to 2 parts water syrup. Five of the six hives are drinking over a pint a day. I noticed yesterday that my first nuc hive has not touched the syrup.

Hive Check

Opened up all six hives.

#1 - no work being done on super. Very little work on upper brood box. Lower brood box very full so I switched three frames between the two brood boxes.

#2 - Packaged bees - very little progress. I see some brood and eggs and larvae on just two frames.

$3 - First Nuc from Mark - lower brood bos full of bees so switched out three frames with upper brood which had some activity. Still nothing going on in the super.

#4 - Nuc from Mark - Brood box full so I put another brood box on top along with a super.

#5 - Nuc from Mark - repeated as with #4

#6. - Swarm from CHS - brood box active but only about 2/3 full. Did not add anything else to this hive.

Hive Check

The bees are extremely active around all hives. I opened each hive and pulled a few frames to see how things are progressing. This journal shows that by this time last year, we were pulling honey. Currently, the upper brood boxes are empty and have not been worked much. Will check again in a few days and will rotate boxes if necessary.

BTW, the unpainted nuc box in the picture is from a swarm Molly and I captured in a tree at CHS. That was pretty cool!

Nucs Installed

Picked up and installed a nuc of bees last Saturday from Mark Chorba in Check. Five brimming full frames. Brood, honey, pollen - everything was in great shape. As of today, it is our most active hive of the three that we have. Had to put a second brood box on top and they are filling that one up fairly quickly.

The main hive (going into the third year) has really picked up as well. Brood pattern now on six of the ten frames.

The new packaged bees are also active and producing brood and taking in pollen.

All three hives are sucking down the sugar-water at a pint per day.

New Hive Started

We recieved the package of bees from Walter Kelly on Monday. Upon inspection, we found that the Queen cage was empty except for a few dead attendant bees. The replacement Queen came yesterday so we put her in the hive. We will inspect the hive on Sunday and will release her then. Will also start feeding them with 1:1 sugar syrup.

The activity around the main hive was much more than has been all spring. That is a good sign.

End of March Check

Last weekend we rotated the two brood boxes. Today we checked out the bottom box and found the queen easily. That's because there are not very many bees in the hive. They are very active on one side of one frame. We saw about a third of the brood area had brood and we saw a few frames with capped honey. We also saw cells with pollen. The rest of the frames are empty.

Hive Check

The weather is suppose to be beautiful. Sunny and near 70 degrees. Went out to look at the hive this morning and the bees are fairly active. The empty hive that has been treated with the moth balls, has some sort of stringy looking fungus(?) on most of the frames. I took these frames out and exposed them to the sun light as well as to the foraging bees in hopes that they will help clean them up. I am going to take pictures and send them to Graham for his analysis and advice.

Placed a pollen patty on the active hive a few weeks ago and have been feeding 1:1 sugar water for a few months. Need to check on the status of these two items sometime this weekend.

Winter Notes

Well, a lot has happened. The two new hives collapsed so we sealed them up with moth balls inclosed to disinfect and prepare for Spring 2009. The original main hive appears to be doing well although, as I write the temperature is falling into the single digits. We are still feeding a 1:1 ratio of sugar water. I have placed an order for two NUCs from the NRVBA for next Spring.

This will probably be my last post until then!

End of Summer

Lots has happened. We combined the middle and third hives because the third hive was very weak and struggling. We did this about a month ago. Today, both hives are extremely active. More active than they have been in 5 to 6 weeks. We've had some rain recently and the goldenrod is blooming.

Routine Check

Casey and I harvested 30 more jars of honey two days ago. Today, I did an inspection of the other two hives. I pulled the super off of the middle hive because they were not building comb on any of the starter strips. I pulled and inspected all frames on the top brood box and things look really good. Lots of brood, capped and uncapped, lots of polen and honey as well.

The third hive looks exactly the same. I see lots of drone cells, uncapped larvae, and no Queen cells. I pulled off the top brood box because things were not happening in it. I took frames that had lots of drawn comb and put them into the lower brood box.

More Honey

Casey and I harvested three more frames of honey on Wednesday. The honey was really dark. We also took two frames of brood and honey from the first hive, shook off the bees, and placed them into the third hive, which we think has been Queenless for a few weeks. Tomorrow, Sunday, we will take a peek inside to see if there are any Queen cells forming. If not, then we'll order a Queen...if we can find a place that's still selling them.

So far, we've earned $250.00 in honey sales! If things go as expected, we should harvest another 25 to 40 jars of honey. If we can sell all of it, that should bring in another $125.00 to $200.00.

Honey Money

So far, Casey and I have harvested a little under fifty bottles of honey from two supers. We have sold between 25 and 30 jars for a net of $156.00. There is one super full of honey still on the hive that has not been capped yet. We will check on Thursday to monitor it's progress.

Still concerned about the other two hives. The packaged bees seem to be producing new brood but the activity in and out of the hive is very slow/weak. The split hive appears to have no new brood except for drone cells. At last check, last week, no Queen sighted but saw one Queen cell that had the side opened and the queen larvae exposed and probably dead. This is a sign of a new Queen that emerged and killed this develping Queen larvae.

Honey Flow!?

Walked out to check the bees this afternoon around 4:00 pm. The main hive and the middle hive had more bees coming and going than I have ever seen! The middle hive has been really quiet up until now. But today, very, very active. Hopefully not pre-swarm activity.

Honey flow? Maybe. Should be sourwood if it is. We'll know better on Sunday when we check.

Very Hot Weather!

It has been really hot and humid for the past three days. The bees are bearding so I pushed the supers back about an inch to help in ventilation. At this time, we have two supers on. The lower super is the one we extracted four frames from and the upper super has ten frames full of honey but the bees don't seem to want to cap it yet. Graham says that's because the cells aren't full enough. Be patient.

There's a slight possibility that within two or three days, we may have a lot of honey to process! That would be really cool! Graham said that sourwood should be out within the next two weeks.

 
The crushed comb and honey gets scraped into a 5 gallon bucket that has a "wedding veil" filter in it. This will be left to drain over night and bottled in the morning! The really cool thing is that all of the equipment, empty frames, tray, spoons, knife, scrapper, are all taken out next to the hive and the bees will clean it all up for us to be used again for the next honey flow!

 
Casey uses a knife to cut the comb from the frame. It falls onto a tray where it is crushed up. This is the messy part. Tended to get honey all over our selves!

 
Casey and I harvested our first honey today! We removed four frames. This is one of the frames and it is really heavy!

Honey Check

The top super is about 85% capped. The bees allowed me to open the super and pull up frames to inspect. No problem. However, whenever I attempt to lift the top super off to inspect the lower super, they stung me! The top super is extremely heavy so it's no fun to be struggling with a 70 pound super and getting stung on the hands at the same time.

Back to wearing gloves.

If the weather clears up tomorrow, I will take and post pictures.

We Have Honey!!!!!!!!

Performed a check on all three hives. The one year old hive has the super completely full of honey. All ten frames. It's about 10 to 20% capped and should be ready for harvesting by the middle or end of this week.

Tomorrow I will place a second super below this super and hope that the honey flow continues.