Honey-filled SPARK bee hives

Today Sarah, my daughter, and I went to SPARK to check on the state of the hives. We were hoping to split the hives today, but there were drone brood cells but only one or two boys in the hive. So we opened up the brood nest and worked on the hives.

The principal, Terry Harness, met us there to let us in (it's winter break and the teachers and kids are not there). He took photos (I did not) and tweeted them (so click to see them) and below are two photos taken by Principal Terry Harness.

(both photos above are by Principal Terry Harness)

Remember the comb that was standing on top of the queen excluder?  When we removed the queen excluder, we found the comb intact and below the queen excluder, the bees had hung brood comb. We cut the brood comb off of the bottom and rubber banded it into a medium frame.

We added a box to each hive. Where we could, we opened up the brood nest. Turns out that some of the boxes on the hive are shallows so we couldn't checkerboard to open it up. I'm thinking I may move those shallow frames into medium boxes even though there will be space below that the bees will fill with comb. I can't stand not having transferable frames.

It did feel good to remove each queen excluder and leave the hives in better shape than before.

We cut the honey comb off of the queen excluder and I brought it home and immediately crushed it to harvest it.

When the honey has drained into the honey bucket, I'll bottle it and put together a bee gift bag to be auctioned at SPARK's fundraiser in a few weeks.