WABE and **Me** - a Conversation about Allergies and Honey

Our local public radio station, WABE 90.1 FM, sent reporter, Michelle Wirth, over to my house to interview me and to look at and listen to my backyard hives. She spent a good part of last Thursday afternoon over with my hives and me.

As the day went on, she got more and more comfortable with my bees. In the end, I had to bake cookies for our MEETUP meeting that night and left her with the bees to tape sounds of the hive. She had gotten so comfortable with them that, wearing a jacket and veil, she was right up beside the hive surrounded by thousands of foragers coming home!

Here's the link to the radio show and about ten photos that her photographer took while they were here.

Harvest of the Huge Honeycomb

Below you can see a slice of the huge honeycomb from the double-wide comb. It was too fat to go into a cut comb box and frankly, wasn't pretty enough with its over-fat side of honey.


I saved one segment and put it in a wide-mouthed jar to make chunk honey with it.

Looking at the entire length of this comb, you can see that the bees coped in part with the width by making a second midrib. If you look at the lower part of the comb, you can see at the left edge and second midrib that goes approximately to the center of the comb length.
I guess this was to give the overfull area more strength.

Here's a closer view of the beginning of the second midrib. I crushed and strained this honey - first of the season. I haven't bottled it yet. It's still in the straining bucket waiting for me to have time this weekend.

Complaints of a Beekeeper with a Full Time Job

I wish I had a job with more flexibility. Truth be told, I do have a lot of flexibility....I am self-employed but the kind of work I do involves regular commitments and I need to make a living to support all of this bee equipment purchasing I keep doing!

So I end up with a set schedule (which I set) in which I leave early and return home after dark. It's, of course, different in the spring when we are on daylight savings time (coming soon - March 11). Now, however, I don't have daylight to work the bees unless it is the weekend and then I am often busy or out of town. And even if I come home and it is still light at the end of my day, it is not the time to open the bee hives.

My new nucs (two of them) should be here in the next week or two (the beekeeper from whom I'm getting them said it could be as soon as next week.) I need to paint hive boxes and get ready, but I haven't yet. I'm hoping I can find some time for these getting ready tasks before the bees actually arrive. I do own the hive boxes already and am not waiting for an order to arrive.

I did find some paint for the new hives. I have several quarts of paint left from when I was choosing paint for my sunporch - so one hive will be painted "grape beginnings" and the other "peach blush." I don't want to leave Destin yellow since all the bees in it died - bad sign. So I want the new bees to have a fresh color and new start to their lives on my deck. I'll have to come up with two new names as well.

Assuming, as I did, that my hives would make it through the winter, I ordered a comb honey super from Walt Kelly. You have to have a really strong hive, at least in their second season, to make comb honey and my only living hive is quite weak, so I'm putting that box aside until next year. Maybe with small cell regression and more powdered sugar shakes, I can beat the Varroa mite to the punch and keep my hives alive next winter.