Bee Haus!

Those clever people at Omlet have made a "beehaus" - a kind of updated Dartington bee hive. It's all a bit "mac" vs. "pc", if you know what I mean, and they're expensive too, just to keep the analogy going. That said the approach to have two hive bodies side by side is interesting. I've no idea whether this will be a revolution in bee keeping but if promotes new interest then that's got to be a good thing.

Apparantly it's been endorsed by Natural England, a British government conservation agency.

Go have a look...

http://www.omlet.co.uk/products_services/products_services.php?view=Bees

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/video/2009/aug/05/beehaus

Final detailed check before harvesting?

Well, more work has been done in the supers (since 12 August) and Matt & I made a detailed assessment of the quantity of honey now stored. We reckon that my supers are overall about 30% full.

So, if there is a theoretical maximum yield of 40lbs of honey per super I may have about 24lbs of honey to harvest. However, if the theoretical yield is more like 20lbs per super I may get about 12lbs of honey. So somewhere between 15 and 20lbs is my guess to what I might harvest. I'm pretty pumped about that! When I think about it, it sounds even better - I only started with a package of bees on 18 April, with no drawn out comb, nothing but an empty box of foundation! My girls have managed to establish a thriving colony and store about 20lbs of honey (over and above what they need) in a little over 4 months. Wow!

There is one potential downside. The stored honey may be quite wet (as only a small amount is actually capped off), so once harvested it will probably have to be used quite quickly.

I will let Eugene know and maybe he will come round during the week and take a look for himself. But the thought of harvesting my own honey is quite exciting.

Vacation...

I've been away for just over a week on vacation and it seems the bees have been winding down too - although not much honey has been added over the past week, it is good that at least some has been added! The other good news is that more cells have been capped off so honey from these should be in good condition to harvest.

Dealing with the Harvest. Eugene (who lives up the road) says I can probably wait until the end of September for a final harvest. This is when he plans to take off his final harvest. He is getting together with some of his pals and he kindly asked if I would like to join in. I hope to take him up on this. I will take another look in the supers at the end of August so see how we stand.

I am also hopeful that I will not have a verroa mite problem this year and again thanks to Eugene I have more confidence that I should be in good shape. I will do a check on mite numbers to see how I am doing, but I hope I will not have to treat as I plan to extract honey at the end of September.

Fogging!

Aaagghhh! The dreaded city sanitation department has been out tonight - I saw them "fogging" mosquitoes. Fortunately they were some way away, but who knows when the truck will drive down our street! I'm worried that the insecticide will "do for" my bees! A few are outside tonight, but thankfully it is a cool evening and it is probably fewer than normal.

I will have to inspect in front of the hive for corpses tomorrow.

Wait, and give it a shake...

Good news. I've had help from the beekeeper discussion forum and the advice is to wait to the end of August to see if any more frames get capped off. If not the stores may still be OK - the way to tell? Just turn the frame up-side-down and shake it to see if anything drips! If not we should be good to go!

Not much is happening...

I had a look yesterday at what's been going on in the hive - not much by the look of it. I removed the third "un-built-out" super about a week ago in the hope this would stimulate or concentrate the work ethic. It seems not to have worked particularly well. However some honey is still being stored but I suspect this will slow down further as we head into August and it may well be that I've had my lot - for this year at least.

I guess about 4 frames in the top super and perhaps 3 in the bottom super are almost full of honey, but little has been capped off. I'm not sure what this means. Perhaps the honey is not dry enough to be capped, or perhaps they are feeding off it now and so capping it off is not worth the effort? I will post a thread on the beekeepers forum later - maybe they have a few ideas. Either way I don't know if I am going to have enough to harvest next weekend.

In reflection I think I have been a little optimistic with regard to harvesting any honey this year. Just to have had my girls bees go from a package to a thriving colony should have been sufficient.

Reshuffle...

I "bottom supered" last night - no not some deviant apiarist late night activity, but the addition of a new super containing frames of just foundation. I found out via the discussion forum (thanks to JefcoBeeman) that I should not have put my super of foundation on top of the built out combs but directly above the second hive box - well duh!

Apparently (and I don't know why) bees are more likely to build out foundation if it is here and not above other frames of built out comb - probably they're lazy and can't be bothered to go to the top of the hive to work.

Anyway time will tell if I moved the super too late to be able to get honey in it this year. I did however take a gander at the frames that have the built out comb. There has been some work, and more and more cells now being capped off. I have high hopes that there will be some extraction in August.