It Was a Rainy Night in Georgia

Finally - we had a rainy night in Georgia and actually waked up to a rainy day! I can't believe it. We've had so little rain that I've forgotten how the beeyard looks on a rainy day. I just had to post a picture because in this drought, this is a very unusual sight!

I'm thrilled for the rain, but the hives look a little forlorn. I'm so used to seeing the girls out and about, foraging, cleaning, zooming out of the hives.

Making and Boxing Cut Comb Honey

Today I took a super of honey off of my Bermuda hive with the plan to cut comb and box it in plastic boxes. I've never done this before so I didn't make a movie but instead I made a slide show. Maybe I'll make a video of it next year!

I learned a lot doing this harvest method.

1. I had a difficult time cutting the comb and not dripping the frame onto previously cut squares of comb. I finally figured out that to help with this problem, I needed to lay the frame of comb on top of the draining rack. Then cut the squares all out at once before moving the frame.

2. My bees made all of their comb from starter strips this year. Sometimes they didn't make straight lines of cells and my comb isn't as pretty as it might have been. I appreciate their hard work, however. Next year I might look for the straightest lines of cells in choosing frames for this process.

3. I have another hive, Mellona, that produced some gorgeous comb, but I kept waiting for them to fully cap all the frames in the super before harvesting it. It took them so long that when I harvested that super I had to use crush and strain as a harvest method because there were too many travel stains on what had been gorgeous white comb. Next year I may harvest frame by frame for cut comb, rather than wait for the entire super to be ready.

4. On the Internet forums, I was advised to use a serrated knife. I didn't because I have a wonderfully sharp Victorinox knife with a really thin blade that went through the comb like butter. If you try this at home, however, you may want to use a steak knife with a serrated blade. I cut on the inside of the cutter to make sure the squares actually fit into the 4" boxes.

5. I bought these plastic boxes from Brushy Mountain. They snap shut but not really tightly. I think if I do this again, I'll find a different container. When I take these out of the freezer and label them, I'll probably use tape to keep the box securely closed.

The slide show should start automatically. If you want to see the pictures larger, then click on the picture and you should go to my Web Album where you can see the pictures more easily.



From the eight frames that I harvested, I got about 26 pounds of honey product (since comb is included in cut comb and chunk). This brings my harvest this year to approximately 103 pounds of honey from 32 frames or about 3.2 pounds per frame. That isn't a particularly useful statistic since some of the frames were mediums and some shallow.

Note:  (added 2011)  I learned an improved system posted after this was made.  You can read about the changes here.

Today's Inspection

The small swarm hive was doing fine. Signs were there that the queen was laying well. There are plenty of bees. They are still ignoring the last three frames on the hive, but that's fine. They've only been in the medium 8-frame box for a week.

Proteus Bee is quite a different story. There is no sign there of a laying queen although I gave them brood and egg frames and had seen two queen cells in production on June 23. I didn't see a queen, and felt rather discouraged, but left them in their hive and gave them two more frames of brood and eggs from Bermuda in case they need to make yet another queen. I saw one open queen cell but no evidence of laying.

We've had really stormy weather over the early part of July and if she left on her mating flight she may not have returned. I want to give them a chance. Interestingly this hive was using the upper entrance when they were above Proteus A and I have noticed that the bees in this hive rarely enter through the front door - more often through the upper entrance!

In Bermuda, I found tons of bees and a super of honey with beautiful capped honey for cut comb. I learned a lesson in Bermuda. I found a frame that I had used rubber bands to hold in comb that broke. I had put that frame on the side of the hive box. The bees had fastened the comb to the side of the box. I won't put a repaired comb with rubber bands against the side of the box again. I took this out and will melt the wax - not put it back in the hive.

Today I went on the inspection with several medium frames constructed and with starter strips or full sheets of foundation waxed in. I am so glad because there were a number of frames I either moved or changed and was so glad to have the extras. I'll do that on every inspection going forward.

In Mellona I had tried to open the brood box by taking out the honey filled frames in positions 3, 5, and 7 and substituting starter strip frames. The bees had built comb in the starter strip frames and were filling it with honey.

However, in 2, 4 and 6, they had cleared out the honey in the traditional football shaped pattern and although the queen wasn't laying there, the groundwork was all done. I felt good about opening up the brood nest. Look how shiny the cells are now that they are empty of honey.

Pictures of Bees from Eggs to Emergence

I just found a wonderful post on a bee blog that I often visit (I can't read it, it's in Turkish). He has posted pictures of bees in each stage of development from egg to emerging bee.

Here's the blog

The sweet owner of the blog gave me this rudimentary vocabulary to help look at his posts:

Beekeeping = Arıcılık
Beekeeper = Arıcı
Hive = Kovan
Wax= Balmumu
Honey = Bal
Pollen = Polen (:
Larvae = larva (:
Thanks = Teşekkürler
Queen = Kraliçe "or" Ana
Egg = Yumurta
Drone = Erkek arı
Worker = İşçi
Frame = Çerçeve
Queen Cell = Ana Memesi
Swarm = Oğul

Scroll down to 05 Temmuz 2007 which must translate to July 5, 2007 and look at the third post titled: "Belki Referans Olur!!!"

You'll love the pictures. Click on them each to see the brood in various stages of development, marked by number to indicate day of development.

Occasionally he puts an English title on his pictures so the blog is well worth visiting both for the marvelous pictures and the occasional label that I can in fact read.

What I've Learned from My first attempt to Pour a Wax Block

As I expected, the first try didn't come out perfectly. The block is pretty and didn't crack. But I used a nonstick brownie pan and the block shows every scratch in the pan's surface. The good news is that the block came out easily (I had wiped the surface of the pan with slightly diluted Joy on a paper towel.

Lesson one: Buy a brand new pan to use for this so the scratches don't show on the block

There are flaws on the block - white marks that I don't know how to analyze. Maybe those are places where the wax cooled too quickly - not uniformly with the rest of the block. I had hot water around the sides of the pan when I poured the wax in, but added more hot water to the bath after I poured the wax.

Lesson two: Make sure the hot water is as high as I want it before I pour the wax.

There's an unexplained divit in the wax. (See the last picture). I saw it as the block started to cool but didn't know it would be a divit. All I can think is that the divit has to do with the soapy wipe. Perhaps there was too much soap there.

Lesson three: Next time try greasing the pan rather than soaping it to see if that makes a difference.

And although I had filtered this wax through a paper towel in the solar wax melter, I think it needed filtering again because there are some tiny brown flecks on the bottom of the block (which would take away from its quality).

Pouring a block of wax

I've had such lovely wax from my solar wax melter that I decided to try to pour a block of wax to enter in the Metro Atlanta Beekeeper's competition in September. The rules for the competition state that a wax block should be 1 - 2 inches thick - not more than 2 - and weigh 2 pounds or more. I had 48 ounces of gorgeous beeswax to melt.

I melted the wax in the double boiler that I recently purchased on EBay....not exactly. I won the auction for two different double boilers on EBay for this purpose, but when they arrived both were so much better than my old double boiler that I designated it the wax double boiler.

In reading about wax blocks for competition, I found out that it is easy for a block this size to crack. The challenge is to make the block cool into a solid block with no cracks. I found two pages describing getting a wax block ready for a contest. One is here and the other is here.


Both articles cited above say to put the mold for the wax block into a hot water bath so that it can cool really gradually. I wiped the inside of the pan mold with soap soaked into a paper towel. I set the pan in the large roasting pan that I use for harvesting honey and poured water that was about 170 degrees around the pan. In this shot you can see the clear wax in its pan with the edges beginning to solidify.

In this picture you can see that the top is beginning to solidify. "No vibrations," is a prerequisite of not cracking the block so I tiptoed around the kitchen. In the above picture, you can see the wavy pattern on top of the pan. Hope that doesn't mean something vibrated!

In this last shot, the water is cool to the touch and the wax is getting harder. If you double click on the picture above, you can clearly see that there is hardening around the edges, but not in the center. I'll wait until some time tomorrow to take it out of the mold.

Video on How to Use a Simple Solar Wax Melter

Here's a video on how to use a very simple solar wax melter for beautiful results.

The plans for the solar wax melter can be found here. I built the solar wax melter last year and have been using it on every sunny day this June to melt the wax I've collected over these two seasons.

Pictures of how I put it together can be found here.

Using the solar wax melter is simple, fun, painless (it happens while I am at work during the day without any energy or supervision from me), and the results are gorgeous filtered wax. Try it, you'll love it. This is the most popular video on my site (#2 is the Crush and Strain video) and for some reason both are blacked out by Google today - so if you would like to watch a video about the solar wax melter, you can click here.

Small Swarm Gets its Own Hive Box

Last night I painted the hive box for the small swarm that invited itself to my deck. My plan was to move them out of the deep nuc where they have been living to a medium 8-frame box.

I moved each frame from the nuc, orienting it exactly as it had been in the original nuc. When I first put the swarm in the nuc, the bees were living on deep frames since that is the box they had claimed for themselves when they arrived on my deck.

I have gradually moved out the deep frames and replaced them with medium ones. One I moved because it had wax moths. Several others I moved when I added frames of brood and bees from other hives. So I thought they were living on all medium frames in a deep nuc.

Imagine my surprise when I found that the last frame was still a deep - oh, dear. I examined the frame carefully and found that there were a few capped brood cells but the queen was not recently laying there.

What should I do?

I went to another hive and got a frame of capped brood that was a medium frame and substituted it for the deep. I made sure I didn't get the queen from the hive where I stole the frame. To do that I shook most of the bees on the frame back into their original hive before moving the frame. I needed to get dressed and go to work so I couldn't pick over the frames as I might under different time stress. So the frame I moved also had a lot of drone cells. I hope that won't be a problem for this new hive.

I put it all together, stood the nuc box and the deep frame outside the entry to the hive, put the top on and added the mint plant which has been on top of the nuc.

So now the small swarm has its own home. I hope they will thrive there.

When I pulled the frame from Bermuda, I saw lots of open swarm cells and one supercedure cell - and I only looked at three frames. They are packed into that hive, although I've given them lots of room to grow that they are barely using. I'll need to think about how I might open up the brood box even more.