Honey Harvest!

I spent an excellent (and enjoyable Saturday and Sunday morning) harvesting my honey. It was reasonably hard work lifting the frames and picking away at the combs removing the cappings, but with the help of others (and a few beers) the time passed quite swiftly!

However, before I could enjoy myself and conduct all this fun stuff I had to go and take the supers off my hives. I first went to the Botanical Gardens and removed 3 supers on the afternoon of 4th July. What a nice way to spend the day you might think... I'd agree, if it wasn't 41C (105F) and I didn't have to do all that lifting and hauling around of the supers! I was soaked with sweat within minutes! The good news was that my girls didn't seem to mind me doing it!

While I was at the gardens I checked my nuc and found the "squashed" swarm cell was still in place but that the bees in the nuc had started to form a new queen cell. I removed this as I found the queen and I plan to combine the hives sometime later this week.

I removed 5 supers from my hive at home on Saturday morning; at 6.30am it was already about 30C (85F) and again it proved to be really hot and really unpleasant. by the time Sunday came and I had to remove my final 2 supers I really didn't have the appetite to get fully kitted up. Anyway, thankfully, the hot weather here broke on Saturday evening (daily highs had been over 38C for 10 days running) and it was a much cooler 20F (70F) at 6.30am. It was still hot but I managed to remove the supers easily enough. Who has a good idea for a refrigerated beekeeping suit?

Once again the honey from the three sources was quite different in colour and flavour. The Botanical Garden Honey being quite "strong", the honey from home "sweeter". To summarize:

Botanical Garden Honey = 24.5 kgs (54 lbs)
"Big" Hive Honey = 50 kgs (110 lbs)
"Small" Hive Honey = 22.5 kgs (50 lbs)
"Observation" Hive = 3 kgs (7 lbs) - from one deep frame.

Total = 100 kg (220 lbs)

Nice Job Girls!

The 2012 Haul!

My Motley Crew

Two weeks of hard work!

I came home from vacation last week to find the girls in my large hive at home have been working hard and packing in the honey! In the last 2 weeks all 5 supers have been almost filled! I need to check my other hives ASAP to see when I will harvest, but it all looks rather good for July 4th!

The Hunt for Drone Congregation Areas!

Well we did manage to go and hunt for the DCAs near Selborne. My Dad, Matt and I went for a lovely 4 mile walk through the gorgeous Hampshire countryside looking in three locations for the DCAs.  Sadly we didn't find any drones, but it was a beautiful day and we enjoyed ourselves as the photos testify!

Next time maybe I'll try and find a local beekeeper who actually knows their location! Nevertheless I have a big thank you to say to the chaps at Gilbert White's House in Selborne - Flair Kitching the Assistant Manager and David Standing the Head Gardener. Their instructions to find the locations were wonderful.  The fact we didn't find any bees there seemed only a very minor failing!

Here are some other views from our walk!

Hive-tastic!

Leaving for our vacation this afternoon so I said goodbye to my bees! It's very important they know we're going away and why!

Anyway the hives in my neighbours have not really taken any syrup in the last few days, so I didn't add any more. But I did rearrange the frames to help to encourage them to draw out more foundation.

The hives in my yard are great! Three supers are pretty much full. The two other supers are there to be drawn out and also for some space should we get a nectar flow!

The other hive yard has space in its two supers but I have one in reserve should it be needed!

Bring it on!

Setting Up For Our Vacation

Our vacation is looming fast and it's time to set the hives up so they don't need attention for a few weeks!

Susan has kindly offered to feed the hives that are in my neighbours yard. I put a gallon of syrup in each yesterday and we'll feed these as long as it takes to get the bees to draw out the frames of foundation.

I managed to look in my Botanical Garden hives today. The hive I started from a nuc was doing rather too well! It had out-grown the single deep and I found brood in the super I had moved from the adjacent hive. So I moved this super to the bottom of the hive and I also added new deep to the top of the hive; having moved some frames up into it. The other hive at the gardens is blooming too! I reversed the deeps, moved the super that was full of brood up above the deeps and then added a fifth (yes fifth!) super!!!! Three supers are being filled and new foundation is being drawn out; the other two supers are empty, but have a lot of drawn comb, so I'm optimistic these will see some action!

That just leaves the two hives in the yard. I think I will try to look through these on Friday morning and I may add some more supers (my last ones) just in case there happens to be a major nectar flow while we're gone!!

Feeding Time!

The two hives that I made from the city hive have been slow to grow and little new comb has been drawn out. So I decided to start a regime of feeding. I added a feeder and about half a gallon of 1:1 syrup last Thursday and today (4 days later) added a further gallon of 1:1 syrup to each hive. Clearly the girls are enjoying their feast! Hopefully this will stimulate brood rearing and some comb construction.

While the hives may not have any honey this year I'm determined to build them up for the winter and homey production next year!

Bee S.O.S!

I had my first emergency call on Saturday!  My friends Mike and Monica have/had 2 hives that are in trouble. They lost one and called me for help with their remaining hive.  They think the hive they lost was due to Small Hive Beetles. The hive just declined over a period of time and the health and vitality plummeted!  When I saw it there were lots of larvae present in the honey - an unpleasant, nasty mess !It's very sad and I know what they went through.  A couple of years ago I nearly lost a hive the same way, but managed to catch it early enough to do something about it!

So their other hive is currently queenless. I'm not sure why, but they had tried to introduce a new queen but this was not successful, so I was asked if I had any frames of eggs and larvae I could donate in order to stimulate the bees to rearing new queen.  I think we hit on a good solution. Mike and I checked on my observation beehive (the 5-frame nuc) - we found the perfect frame! Eggs (I think - it's so hard to tell) and lots of larvae - all uncapped.  We found the queen on this frame so I am fairly confident there should be eggs present.  Also, removing this frame of eggs also helps me manage my observation hive as it helps to keep the number of bees in the nuc under control. If this tactic fails I may just let them start a new colony using the queen and frames in the observation hive.  At least I won't have to worry about how to overwinter this hive!

Anyway, they will leave their hive alone for about a week, and then check for emergency queen cells.  If cells are present then it should be another week or so before a queen emerges and then another couple more weeks before she gets mated and starts to lay. I think if they inspect the hive this coming weekend and find cells they should leave the hive alone for at least a month.

I am looking forward to seeing what happens!