More photos from Honey collection

Here are some more photos from the honey collection.

Yum!

Hot, sweaty and sweet work!

Robbers in Aggie's hive

Tuesday, August 31, 2010
We went to Aggie's to rob the honey from her bee hive.  This is quite a process and it involves taking what the honey bees have labored long and hard to produce.  That said, they just might resent us taking their honey.

First we smoke them, which mostly covers up any alert, intruder, attack pheromone they might produce.  We do not want everyone to get upset with us.  Here I am with all my protective gear ready to smoke them.

The top compartment is called a super.  It has smaller frames.  The queen is kept down in the hive bodies by a queen excluder which is a screen that allows the worker bees access but the queen is too big to squeeze by.  This keeps her from laying eggs in the super and the honey bees use these frames for just storing honey.

To get the bees to leave the super we spray a product called Bee Gone on felt inside the top of a cover.  They cannot stand the smell of this product.  They will leave the super and go down into the hive body after a few minutes.  We waited about 15 minutes and opened the hive and low and behold only a few hold outs (bees who must not have a good sense of smell).

Harry removed each frame...blew off the remaining bees and placed the frame in a hive body we had positioned in a wheel barrel.  I quickly covered it with a towel.  We did not want the bees to find the honey.

Note:  the limit of his protection was long sleeves.  Bees like him.
He is using a neat little clamp that makes lifting the frames much easier.  Bees have stuck the frames into the hive with their propolis.Perhaps this is to make it difficult for us.

Once we had all the frames in the wheel barrel and covered for security reasons (we did not want the bees to know thieves were at work) it is off to the garage.  You have to work with the honey in an enclosure or the bees, yellow jackets, and other insects will find you.  Who needs that kind of competition?

We are members of the local beekeepers association and have use of the honey extraction equipment.  This includes the extractor, hot knife, and a plastic tub for catching the wax.

Aggie is removing the wax capping using the hot knife. 



We all had to try this.  This is the most fun!

Frames are then placed in the extractor and spun by turning the crank.  It works like a centrifuge and spins the honey out of the comb.

Unfortunately my camera battery died about this time.

The next day Harry cleaned up the extractor.  Well he thought he had cleaned it ... and he looked out to find the bees did not approve of the cleaning job he had done and they were finishing it for him.  They took every last drop of honey form the extractor.

This is the beautiful result.

Keep your hands off my honey.

How did Jack Trap's chickens get in this blog?

Swat Team Alert

"A Wake County sheriff's deputy found himself

in serious need of a  
SWAT team Tuesday after getting into a standoff 

with a huge swarm of  
bees that covered his police cruiser."
 
I'm giving them big points for the SWAT team pun!
 

Click here to see the whole story complete with picturs

Swat Team

Another story sent to me from the Garden on The Edge shows a unique way of observing bees. 
Click here to see the pictures of the bees under glass. 
Bees will fill the space, no matter where it is. The Langstroth hives that most beekeepers use is designed with what he (Langstroth) discovered to be “bee space” (~3/8”). The space between the frames is just enough that they will build out the comb on each frame but not get carried away and fill it like they did in the jar. There is enough space for two bees to pass one another after the comb has been built out.

Aggie's bees

Our friend Aggie is not able to work with her bees especially during this heat wave.  We went over today to look at the hive and make sure all looked good.

Aggie's hive has two hive body boxes and one souper on top.  The plan is for the bees to raise their young in the lower two hive body boxes and store honey in the top souper which we plan to rob later.








The first frame just had some comb being built out. 

Second frame has about 1/3 of the honey capped.














Third frame about 1/3 capped honey.

Fourth frame, bonanza, Mostly capped honey. 

Fifth frame about 3/4 capped honey.  No pictures of frames 6, 7 and 8 but they were about 1/2 capped honey. 

This is a frame from the top box that was all honey and a lot of it is capped.  This box was very heavy with honey.  The bottom box had capped brood so the queen is still doing her job. 

All and all Aggie's honey bees are  were docile and calm, they must take after Aggie.  They were quiet while we messed in their hive.  No one got stung.
All looks good Aggie.

Off Topic

Can anyone identify this bird?

Bearding

We have been observing lots of activity on our yellow hive for weeks.  Queen bees can lay up to 1500 eggs in one day so it stands to reason that she can have that many daughters emerging in a day.  After the worker bee emerges from the cell she cleans it up and starts working in the hive building wax or feeding larvae or other such duties.  Then she will become a forager.  She leaves the hive box and spends some time getting oriented and taking some practiced flights.  Which way is North?

You can see why this is called a beard.  This picture was taken early this morning and the crowd will increase as the sun comes up.

Compare it to the green hive which has significantly fewer bees.

Did I say it is HOT?

This is more of a garden update than a bee update but does contain info on the girls.

We were out of town for seven days and it was in the 90s everyday and never did it rain a drop.  This is the result and what we found when we returned home.  The blue berry bushes in pots on the deck are gone.  We have enjoyed them for several years.  Last summer was hard on them and it looks like this summer did them in.

The honey bees found a new source of water since we were gone and did not fill the bird feeder every day.  They finally discovered the lily pad in the fish pond are a good place to get water.

These herbs survived thanks to the jug of water with one small hole in the bottom and the cap on top to seal it in. 













The basil surprised me and I wonder if someone watered this pot.  it was not even wilted.









The fish pond was a little low on water but everyone survived, including the plants. 

The veggies were a little worse for the wear.  We have almost depleated the water in the rain barrel that we use to water them.  Obviously someone needed the moisture and nutrients and took advantage of nice ripe tomatoes.

But they left some for us.