+57 Days: Signs of Honey

Both hives are +57 days after install and I was able to see a little honey in the short super I placed on the hive one week ago. I did not go deep into the hive since I did not want to disturb them as our major nectar flow begins to taper.

Some of the more experienced beekeepers have even declared our nectar flow all but over. I still see a lot of bees clumsily flying in with full sacs of pollen. Our magnolias have almost past and there are only a few remaining blackberry blooms in the backyard. I'm hoping the crape myrtles will be blooming soon.

Both hives have grown to huge populations, filling nearly all of the 10 frames in both deep boxes. It rained last week and in between the rain showers, I ran out and viewed the hive through the screened bottom board and there was a huge pancake of bees.

You can see the dark colored hone in the center of the frame

This is without the flash showing the honey in the center.

You can see there is only one remaining frame to build, the bees were boiling over.

A little Spring Cleaning

One of the things that interested me in the Atlanta Beekeepers shortcourse was learning about all of the different duties of the bees such as guard, mortician, and forager etc.  Another of the jobs is to keep everthing clean and polished.

It is getting close to 90 F here some days and the hives are getting stronger by the day, thus I decided to remove the entrance reducer. When I moved it, there was a bunch of dust/pollen as you can see below.

Here is a few days later . . . (no rain)..all polished up and cleaned.

First honey--just a few spoonfuls

The comb that I cut away from the last inspection was filled with sweet tasting honey/nectar. I placed it on a plate and brought it inside to add it to the comb collected from a previous inspections.

While putting away my inspection gear, my wife owned up to her title of McGyver and figured out a mini "crush and strain" system.

It is a 1 gallon Ziploc baggie, two clothespins, and a hole cut in the corner of the bag. We kept squeezing the comb, and letting it drain.

Here is our first honey

+35 days . . . Lookin' for Burr Comb in all the wrong places . . .

Singing Johnny Lee's 1980 song "Lookin for love" in all the wrong places, lookin for love in all the wrong faces . . .

Dang . . . that dates all of us who remember that one. John Travolta in Urban Cowboy.

Anyways, either the bees do not like the pierco plastic frames or they just wanted to make some wonky comb. Either way it was a mess . . they started to build comb away from the face of the frame rather than on it. It was located on the upper brood box and 2-3 frames away from the center.

At first I turned the frames around hoping for th ebest, but after thinking about it two days later, I figured the bees would not know what I envisioned as "hoping for the best". Thus, I scraped off a lot of this comb

Another view:

It was filled with honey, nectar or a little sugar syrup and jsut glopped everywhere as I used my hive tool to scrape it onto some cardboard.

They did fill some of the upper frames with brood. The population should be increasing exponentially.