Honey Bee Keeping and other pollinators

[Sweetbun]

We and mostly I have been cutting honey comb for days because it takes hours to wait for it to drain. Every cell that is cut drains honey and that takes time. I'm almost done!

A honey comb cut out of the frame resting on a rack over a 1/2 sheet pan. 18-19 inches long.

Cut into 3x3.5 inch sizes, with the end piece which goes into a jar of honey, and in front the trimmings which are reclaimed as strained honey and wax to melt.

The package w/o label of honeycomb. Ready to eat, spread on toast, dropped into some ice tea, eaten by the spoonful with the wax.

The beauty of comb.

Honeycomb in jars of honey.

honeycomb in honey in a pint jar.

Looks so tasty! I just want to eat those honeycombs!

 

[blissful]

Thank you Kathleen!

A long busy day, full bee check from top to bottom, removing a frame from each hive, replacing it with a frame feeder, making sugar/water syrup, adding pollen patties. 10 hives, and Zach's 4.
The extra shallow cut comb box had some full frames so those 4 were removed and we made 4 new frames to add. The weird thing is mostly people only put those shallows on first thing in spring but we're doing the experiment trying to see what the bees do with those frames in the fall. Maybe they'll put wax on them, maybe not.

The wild hive with the amazing queen, has 5 more double sized frames full of brood eggs/larva. That is going to be a crazy big hive in 2 weeks. The nectar flow is over, so they'll use a lot of sugar/water syrup.

In the middle of everything some of the bees looked like they were going to start robbing hives (lots of them in the air), so they smoked the hives. Then put the sprinkler on the hives to settle them down quick.

in 3 days we'll cut the comb from those 4 frames.
We received our second set of labels, and put a box together for sales, for in mr bliss's truck. I don't have pictures yet for that.

I'm glad all the work is done. Mostly by mr bliss.

 

[blissful]

With the much warmer weather in the 80's deg F, bees are flying a lot. Too many. Not normal.
What is going on? There are bees in the front of the house and in the garage 200 feet or more from the hives.

So he takes anything that attracts them, plastic frames w/wax, that he was going to dispose of, takes it out to the curb in the garbage bin.

Now it seems there are more bees in the garage...what is going on? Last month he took all his swarm traps out of trees and stored them in the garage. One of his swarm traps is FULL OF BEES! He caught a swarm. Today he had checked out all 10 hives, refilled the feeders with sugar/water and pollen patties. This calms the bees and they get downright irritable if they have empty feeders this time of year.
None of our hives have swarmed, they are all there.
We're talking with Zach about his hives, wondering if the bees came from his hives but he's not done checking them! We need to figure this out!
If we build another hive, there is no where to put it at this point, we might have to put it to the back of Zach's yard...we don't know. Or we could sell it....we need to figure this out!

 

[blissful]

Since this swarm deal in a swarm trap is new to us we called doug the bee-friend with more experience to figure it out.
The bees could be house shopping, they may set up house or they may leave in search of a better location. Mr bliss closed up the trap at sunset (because most of the bees are in for the night), then moved it over to where the fishing boat is. In the morning he'll open it up and they'll re-orient (with the sun), and be able to find their way back to the trap at the end of the day.
If they set up inside for a week or so, then we can put it on a stand for a while and build a hive for them.