May 23 Inspection: A Pesticide Kill and a Tiny Honey Harvest

Here's the video from the latest inspection for the MABA beekeepers in this time of coronavirus. Zoom is helping us to connect and to learn about bees virtually if not in person! In this video, we inspect the three hives at the garden, rob the bees of two frames of capped honey, and I demonstrate how to harvest via crush and strain in the last twenty minutes of the video.


 

Harvesting Sourwood Honey in the Mountains

On Thursday and Friday, my four year old granddaughter and I went to the mountains to harvest whatever sourwood honey might be on the hives we have at Robin and Mary's farm in Rabun County.   When we arrived, the first thing I saw was this dead European hornet on the landing board of the hive.  The bees must have balled it and killed it - go bees - the European hornet takes live bees to feed their young - GRRR.
                                                                                 

Rain was threatening so I went quickly to work to take the capped frames of honey off of the hives.  This is Rabun County so I left them lots of honey so that they might make it through the winter and only harvested one super from the largest hive.  The smaller hive appeared to have swarmed and requeened and didn't have surplus honey for me.

The capped honey was just beautiful and I gave Robin a cut-comb square along with some liquid honey as a thank you for letting us have hives on his farm.

I put the harvest into a nuc box, covered it with a towel and when the box was full, transported it to the car where I had an empty super waiting.

Robin, who kept bees early in his life, put on a veil to watch and help.  

The way the hives look below is how we left them.  There is a goldenrod flow as August begins to wane so I may add a box to each to accommodate the fall flow, but now we have harvested from the blue hive and consolidated the yellow hive so that both may do well for the remaining days of summer.

Robin and Mary have a beautiful garden in which these hives reside:

Mary and Lark are standing in front of her zinnias and cosmos.

Lark and I went to my mountain house to crush and strain the honey before dinner.  Lark was quite the honey harvester and was seriously good at doing this.

She is using the little pestle in these photos, but it wasn't long before she switched to the big crusher that Bear made for me and was crushing in high style!

The next morning we bottled the honey right after breakfast.  Lark was good at this too and we had quite the assembly line going. 

And the honey was DELICIOUS - yummy sourwood probably mixed with tulip poplar - a different taste than we get in Atlanta.

Rabun County Bees

A couple of weeks ago when I went to Asheville for the Natural Beekeeping meeting, I stayed at my house in Rabun County.  On the way up I saw the bear in the misty rain at Black Rock Mountain Lake.    The day after the conference, the lake was sunny and beautiful and while I didn't see a bear again, I did see Joe Pye weed and goldenrod, evidence of the fall flow (for what it's worth).

Before I drove back to Atlanta, I checked on the Rabun bees.  The last time I was up at the mountain house, I discovered that one of the hives was almost dead and had small hive beetles all through it.

I didn't really check out the cause of the problem when I was there before because I was so upset, so I opened the hive on this visit and brought the boxes back home.  Clearly the hive had been robbed out, and left so weakened that the small hive beetle took advantage of the opportunity.

Two things are evident in this picture.  The edges of the cells are ragged, indicating a robbery.  There were dead bees littering the ground in front of the hive.  And you can see the slime of the small hive beetle.  I brought four boxes back to Atlanta and could hardly stand the sicky sweet smell in the car of the SHB's destruction.

The other hive was almost completely covered with weeds.  It was totally in the shade and had kudzu and other brambles all over the entry.  I didn't take a before picture, but I wish I had.  The bees were still flying happily in and out of the hive.  I knew this vegetation situation was likely so I brought my hedge clippers with me.  I went to work and freed the hive from most of the vegetation.

When I opened it, I was shocked (in all the previous shade) to find that I only saw one small hive beetle in the hive.  Perhaps they were all satiated on the frames from the other hive?

This hive has honey in all three boxes and brood in the bottom box.  I really wanted to taste their honey.  The top box is likely sourwood, but they had not completely capped the honey in those frames, so I brought back a frame from the middle box.

I didn't come prepared for harvest transport, so after brushing off the bees, I put the frame into a pillow case (I'm now using them for hive drapes like Julia taught me), and brought it back to Atlanta.  I crushed and strained it and now have three pounds of luscious grape-flavored honey, likely from the kudzu all around the creek bed where the hive is located!

(The HIDDEN honey frame).

Harvesting the Stonehurst Honey

I had a great time harvesting the Stonehurst Place honey.  Caroline, the innkeeper, took some photos at the beginning (so I am in the photo for a change!) and then I took some pictures of the frames and the rest of the process.  We got about 80 pounds of honey from the two hives (from the two harvest visits) which is remarkable since the hives just got started this year at Stonehurst.

Click on the slideshow to see it full screen and with captions.

What Not To Do .... When Harvesting Honey

I think it's funny that there's a current TV show called "What Not to Wear." This is a post about What Not to Do.....

I harvested today and my honey was various colors, so I decided to keep the light honey separate from the dark. Then I found some frames that seemed like maybe medium honey - neither dark nor light. I have two set up harvesting buckets. I also have a bucket that my brother gave me.

I ran to the sunporch, screwed in the honey gate which was lying in the bottom of the bucket and set the filters on the bucket. Then I put what looked like medium honey crushed into that container. I carried all three outside to let the Hotlanta heat hasten the filter process.

A few minutes into it, I went outside to put out the dripping cardboard for the bees to clean up. I looked over and there were way too many bees flying in the vicinity of my filtering buckets.



Horrors! The honey gate on Barry's bucket was open and leaking. I picked up the bucket, tilted it so the honey would not be pressing at the gate and redid the closure on the bucket. Meanwhile all of this honey was on the ground and the bees were all over the place, sucking it up.



My clean up after harvest included bringing two sheets of cardboard out to the carport for the bees to clean up and putting out the silicone mats I used for crushing for the bees as well.



I also put the dripping frames into an empty super and put them over the inner cover in Lenox Pointe for the bees to clean up.

And I hung the towel on the porch railing that I had draped over the nucs for transporting honey into the house.  The towel had drippings on it from cappings that got damaged in the transfer and the bees had a field day.

What a Honey Harvest We Will Have in Atlanta!

I'm not going to be able to get the top box off of Colony Square without a ladder! And the nectar keeps coming. The tulip poplar flow is long over but the bees are finding other sources - probably sourwood, sumac, mimosa, and garden flowers. It's amazing. The golden flow of bee bodies flying up into the air from the hives is going on when I wake up and still going on when I come home just before dark. Amazing year!

After two years of no honey harvest, this looks like a really good year.



In Lenox Pointe, the bees had not moved up into the empty top box although the box below it is full of burgeoning honey comb as you can glimpse in this picture.



So I moved two of the fat combs from the box above into positions 2 and 3 in the empty box below and put the box on the hive below a full box. We'll see if that works.



In the moving some honey leaked onto the inner cover. Who sends out the alarm, I wonder? Before you know it, there's a line of bees sucking it back up to return it to the hive. At the lower left of the picture, one bee is transferring what she just lapped up to the mouth of another bee! How do they get the message?



Meanwhile I also went over to Stonehurst and here's what the gorgeous honey looks like over there.

Inspecting the Swarm Hive

Here it sits, in the yellow paint of our farm hives, with markings on the front to help with orientation.  I haven't really checked on this hive.  So today I decided to see how they are doing.



Inside I was treated to views of beautiful comb and happy bees.  Did not see the queen, but did see eggs in almost every cell.



Some of the comb was cross-combed and broke off as I separated the frames.  I used rubber bands to hold it in place so that the bees can do repair work.



Made me sick that some of the broken off comb was larvae.  I carefully rubber-banded it back in also.



While in the yard, I checked on Colony Square which is now so tall that I will have to use a ladder to add another box, and they need one.

Below is Lenox Pointe.  They haven't finished working their empty box, but comb was being built quite well.  They don't need another box yet, but at the rate they are going, another box should grace their top by the weekend.

This is quite a honey summer in Atlanta.


Beautiful comb being built in Lenox Pointe.


And a closer view of the clear nectar being put up in this hive.

Busy, Busy Bees

Today I stopped at Stonehurst to check on the bees. I had added a new super to the hives last week. Once again, they had filled every frame and needed new boxes. Here's an example of the gorgeous honey they are putting up. I don't know what the source of this very light nectar is - could be clover or something that is blooming at the Botanical Garden just up the road from the Inn.



We only have one more box for these hives. If they fill up another super before the end of the nectar flow, I'll either need to harvest or we'll have to order new boxes!~



At home I found the same thing. The bees in both boxes had built out the comb in all the frames in the boxes on the hives.



I added a new box to each of my home hives as well. I lit the smoker as I usually do to knock at the door and announce my presence. As soon as I put the hive back together and moved the smoker which had been sitting by the entry, the bees tumbled over each other to get into the hive with their nectar loads.



Here's Colony Square, the tallest of the two hives. The honey in these hives is light just like that at Stonehurst. I'll need to do some reading to determine what might be the source of this light, lovely honey.

Harvesting Honey with My brother Barry

I traveled to my hometown of Natchez, MS this weekend to help my brother Barry harvest his very first honey.  He was so excited.  He had asked me what he needed to do crush and strain and had bought everything I said down to the flexible cutting boards and a pestle!

Here he is harvesting his first honey crop (click on the slideshow to view it full screen):

Many Hands Make Light Work

I got a call from two beekeepers who had been on one of the Blue Heron inspections. I had offered to let them come over to help me harvest honey so they could see for themselves how easy crush and strain is as a harvest method and how it isn't messy at all. I invited them to come on Saturday.

We all put on aprons and Donna and Dick, my new beekeeping friends noted at the end that they didn't even get honey on their aprons!

I had my camera on the macro setting for taking pictures of bees in the hives and didn't get good pictures of the day, but the one below, while fuzzy, does show Donna and Dick hard at work. Don't get me wrong, I remember Tom Sawyer - the key is to get the other person to think that work is FUN!



Dick devised his own special two handed pestle method which made the crushing go quite fast.



After we had crushed all the honey and put it in the bucket to strain, we put the bucket outside in the Hotlanta heat to begin the filtering process. We sat down for iced tea, watched the beehives on my deck, and waited. We talked bees and honey a little while - I showed them my harvest so far this year, my 18th pour wax block from last year, and the various ways you can harvest honey - chunk, cut comb, and liquid.

After a short while, we brought the bucket in and I showed them how easy it is to fill a honey jar from the honey gate on the bucket. I do think that we all had fun.

They went home with a bottle of honey that they could claim as the result of their own hard work (thanks, Tom Sawyer!).

I'll bet I could have convinced them to paint a picket fence if I had had one handy!

Reminder: Blog Radio Talk show Wednesday, the 22nd 5:30 PM EDT: here's the address with the information.

The Value of a Silicone Mat in Honey Harvesting

I love using the silicone mat when I do crush and strain honey. It's merely a silicone cutting board that I bought at the DeKalb Farmer's Market in Atlanta. It perfectly fits the pan I use for crushing the honeycomb.

Here is the mat in the pan - it doesn't quite go end to end in the pan, but that makes it easier to pick it up to transfer the honey and comb to the straining bucket.


Here it is with one frame's worth of crushed honey on it, ready to be transferred to the straining bucket.

Now, this is why I love the mat. It has flexibility so that it can curve around and guide the honey and comb into the strainers. It can be easily lifted out of the pan and moved, honey and all to the bucket. It has an easy surface for using a rubber spatula to get the remaining honey off of the mat and into the bucket.

Here's what a full bucket looks like. I actually split this super into two buckets since a couple of the frames had very light honey in them and I wanted to keep them apart from the much darker honey in the other frames.


In general the comb I am harvesting this year is much less full than the last three years. I think this demonstrates how much the bees lost in making and capping honey when we had weeks of constant rain during the honey flow.