July 22 Robbing the Bees

Today was a sweet day!  Hives A and E both have laying queens. Eggs and larva were in both hives and I was able to find the queen in hive E, she is incredible. I think the queens really do look like royalty, especially OTS queens.  With these new queens, all the hives in my apiary have  had the mite cycle broken which will subsequently decrease the Varroa mite population and with post solstice queens, the honeybee population will soar high above the mites. I have not seen any mites in my hives or on my bees. I have seen the occasional hive beetle.  
For excitement, my sixteen year old son and I robbed a frame of honey from the bees today. We literally took out the frame, brushed the surprised bees off and ran!  This is not the simplest way to remove honey from a hive, but for only one frame of honey this worked well. When you have supers on you can use fume boards or a bee escape board. Both of these methods will evacuate the bees in your honey supers so you have an easier time of taking it from them.  Because I went for making more bees instead of running for honey, I do not have a lot of surplus honey to remove. However, we wanted to at least sample the fruits of our honeybee's labor so we found a frame that was at least 3/4 capped on both sides and removed the honey along with the wax. The wax was freshly drawn, so it was thin, white and edible.  The honey was a light yellow as you can see in the pictures and it was oh so sweet!

Heather holding the frame of honey, heavy!

Scraping off wax and honey to the foundation. The other side of frame was almost completely capped.  You want to make sure your honey is capped as this indicates the bees have dehydrated it down to 18% water. If it isn't capped, it could ferment or spoil.

Isn't comb honey amazing! The bees astound me with their abilities to draw out perfect comb and produce the honey.  I read that one honey bee produces only about 1/12  of a teaspoon of honey in it's lifetime.  The contents of this pan from just one frame of honey was about seven POUNDS!

Stored in Mason jars

I wanted you to see the detail of the wax comb. This comb is fresh, produced by the bees less than a month ago. They secrete it from glands in their abdomen. It comes out in paper thin mini sheets.  From that they form the comb. The hexagon they form is perfect. This shape is the strongest and most efficient to store the honey in than any other shape in creation. God's incredible design of the honeybee never ceases to amaze me!

Empty wax cells, the black on the bottom is the foundation of a frame.

Honey comb, love it and love your honeybees!

New OTS Queen

I know I wasn't going to check in on the hives till July 24th, but I was anxious to see what was going on, so I did. In hive C, I found a beautiful OTS Queen already laying eggs! OTS stands for On The Spot Queen rearing by Mel Disselkoen. If you are interested in learning more about this, visit Mel's website at www.mdasplitter.com  Sorry there are no pictures of the queen, she was too shy and nervous. Found frames with eggs, no larva, so she just started laying.  Hive A and E had no evidence of a laying queen yet, so I did not look for them. I will check them next week.  Hive B and D, both OTS queens are laying well with a nice brood pattern, both of these hives were ready for supers. Each of these had all the frames almost completely drawn out, so a 2nd deep was placed with new waxed frames and a frame taken from the bottom box and placed in the middle.

Hive C is facing you, this is the one with new OTS queen, just started laying. Hive B is to the right (has dark medium super on bottom, part of the original hive I bought back in May), the entrance is on the opposite side. Hive A is behind Hive C and will need to be checked next week for a laying queen.

Hive D with OTS queen. Placed 2nd deep on tonight. The top box is Hive E above a Snelgrove board. This hive  is able to gather warmth from the lower hive, but the Snelgrove board is double screened so they are unable to interact. The Snelgrove board is unique in that it has an entrance on each side that you can keep open or closed. Currently on hive E all the entrances are closed except for the back one.  I will check Hive E next week for laying queen.

July 12

Aaaaahhh, Summer!  After this past winter, I am so thankful for the warmth of summer, for flip flops and tank tops! I'm especially thankful for the bees.  They have been going crazy this week in my garden, mainly in the squash and pumpkin patch. The shrubs in my backyard that they pollinated in May are loaded with berries to the point that the branches are so weighed down they are breaking off.  This has not occurred before, so I'm thinking it has something to do with the bees!  They have also discovered the Zinnia flowers that started blooming this week.  I keep checking the bee balm (Monarda) as it is now blooming, but alas, no honey bees yet.  We peeked in on the hives this week, all is well. Honey stores are building up.  The new queens in the splits should be laying by the 24th of July.  I'm looking forward to learning the extraction process.

Honeybee on Zinnia

Worker inspecting Zinnia.

Try another, this one isn't quite ready for you yet.

See the pollen on her hind legs?  This is commonly called a pollen basket, anatomical term is corbicula.  As the worker is visiting flowers she pauses here and there to "brush" pollen into the basket.  She moistens her front legs with her tongue (proboscis), then brushes the pollen grains that have collected on her head, forelegs and body to her hind legs where the basket is.  When full, she carries it back to the hive to be unloaded. So cool!  I've watched them bring in pollen, it varies in color (white, yellow, orange, tan) depending on the source they collect it from.

 

If you look closely, you can see this worker's tongue working to sip up some nectar. Her tongue is similar to a straw within a straw. The smaller tube, for taking in nectar and the larger for ingesting honey.

 

 

July 1 Outstanding Productivity!

Queen cells and more queen cells found tonight. Needed to check hive C tonight for queen cells and break down all but two of them. This is the hive that I dispatched the queen from last week. The picture below shows the queen cells right where we notched. I will check this hive again around July 23 for a laying queen. She needs time to emerge, take her mating flights, return to hive and start laying.
I am enjoying the bees immensely. I scout out my yard each day, looking for them in the garden or among my flowers.  Today they found the lavender and my buttercup squash.

Queen cells in middle of frame. They look like peanuts hanging off the frame. Love it!



Honey bee on Coreopsis



Loving the Lavender



Honeybee coming in for a landing on Lavender flower.



Honey bee down in flower of Buttercup Squash plant.

On her way out. She zipped across the yard back to the hive to alert the others to her find.