Thursday I had the day off work and took a drive out to the mountain to check the bees, see how the one honey super was coming along, and do some other work; mowing, pick wild black raspberries, etc. I ended up working Memorial Day weekend and it was my last chance to use the saved holiday. Yikes! It hit 100 degrees in Washington! Perfect weather to pull on a thick denim bee suit! The talk around here is that it has been so hot and dry the nectar flow has all but stopped and while my girls are putting the honey away slower than a month ago there still seems to be some coming in. The honey super on Hive 1 is beautiful, almost white comb and a light colored honey. I wish I had a picture but it was so hot I was minimizing the time in the suite and I still had to mow inside the electric fence. I guess the next step is figuring out how to get the bees out of honey super and then extracting it. I hear that is a messy, sticky, good time!
I also made a couple of nuc bodies. Nothing fancy but I figure I can make them (without counting my time) for about 2/3 the price of ordering them and save all the shipping costs. Plus I buy a 1 x 10 and rip it down to medium body size so I used the ripped pieces to make shims or other things. And that is my with my typical screwing up measurements that make a piece of 1 x 10 into a piece of firewood. Measure twice, cut once. Or as I do it - measure twice, cut once, wonder why the pieces don't fit together correctly, realize my mistake, measure twice again, and cut again. Good thing I don't do this kind of stuff for a living. This time I lucked out on my mistake in that I was cutting the side for a hive body, but when I cut it too short I could still use it for a nuc side, so I only wasted a couple inches of wood. No fancy dove tails, but they are cheap and this can be an expensive hobby if you do more than a couple of colonies. Check out the jig I made to help me at Ed's Experiments and Stuff. Now I can always cut the long sides of the hive bodies correctly!
Saturday, June 26, 2010
Sunday, June 6, 2010
Liquid Gold
A few week back Hive 2 seemed to be queenless - there was no brood, only a few capped brood, and no queen found. Then I had a couple bad weeks at work, a good trip to West Virginia to see my in-law's family, and so on the drive to the mountain today I was wondering if there would be a point in getting a new queen or I should just merge Hive 2 to Hive 1. Well there weren't many bees coming out of the hive, which just added to my worry. And when I get up to it I see some guard bees wrestling another bee to keep it out. I was too late to get the video! Darn! So now I am thinking, great robber bees. The hive must be dying. Seeing that I decide to do Hive 1 first so that the bees will be a little disorganized from the inspection so they would be less likely to start robbing Hive 2.
I don't know about other folks around but it seems like it has been a pretty crappy honey year. During the big nectar flow of spring there were so many cool to cold days followed by rain, then a hot day or two, repeating the cycle again and again. I put a honey super on Hive 1 a few weeks back but they have been so slow to build any wax my hopes for honey this year have gotten slimmer and slimmer. I cracked the top and pulled the outside frame. Yeah, still not much wax against the outside but the inside of the frame was about 2/3 drawn. I pulled the next frame and it was pretty well drawn out and had a bit of honey but nothing to write home about. But, the two inside frames looked pretty good. They were totally drawn out and starting to get pretty heavy with honey. Nothing capped yet, but pretty heavy. Sweet! So I threw on a queen excluder, put the honey super back on and sealed it up. Check out how pretty this new wax with shiny honey in it is.
On to Hive 2. I popped the cover and low and behold there are quite a few bees! Hmm. So I start pulling frames. Lo and behold capped pupa! And larva! Was it a fluke? I pulled a couple more, each more full of larva and pupa than the other. Well this is just weird! I pulled that box off and looked at the one below. Again more larva! I'm not sure where this queen came from but there is certainly one there. Whew! Since I thought this hive was going to be dying out I didn't bother bringing another box, plus it is probably too late to super now anyway although I could probably get some wax drawn for next year. I will have to think about that for next time I head out.
I don't know about other folks around but it seems like it has been a pretty crappy honey year. During the big nectar flow of spring there were so many cool to cold days followed by rain, then a hot day or two, repeating the cycle again and again. I put a honey super on Hive 1 a few weeks back but they have been so slow to build any wax my hopes for honey this year have gotten slimmer and slimmer. I cracked the top and pulled the outside frame. Yeah, still not much wax against the outside but the inside of the frame was about 2/3 drawn. I pulled the next frame and it was pretty well drawn out and had a bit of honey but nothing to write home about. But, the two inside frames looked pretty good. They were totally drawn out and starting to get pretty heavy with honey. Nothing capped yet, but pretty heavy. Sweet! So I threw on a queen excluder, put the honey super back on and sealed it up. Check out how pretty this new wax with shiny honey in it is.
On to Hive 2. I popped the cover and low and behold there are quite a few bees! Hmm. So I start pulling frames. Lo and behold capped pupa! And larva! Was it a fluke? I pulled a couple more, each more full of larva and pupa than the other. Well this is just weird! I pulled that box off and looked at the one below. Again more larva! I'm not sure where this queen came from but there is certainly one there. Whew! Since I thought this hive was going to be dying out I didn't bother bringing another box, plus it is probably too late to super now anyway although I could probably get some wax drawn for next year. I will have to think about that for next time I head out.
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