OOps!

As I was inspecting today, I checked a super I had put back on Bermuda for the bees to clean. When I pried out this frame it came apart as I pulled it. This is a good lesson in why it's important to both glue and nail the frames. I must have skipped the glue on this one!

Feeding Frenzy in the Front Yard

Yesterday I harvested cut comb honey. When I finished with a frame I put it in a medium super sitting on a piece of cardboard. This morning I put the filled super back on the hive for the bees to clean up. I put the cardboard in the front yard (the hives are in the back yard). Look at the bees taking the honey back!

The next morning, here's how the cardboard looked. They obviously worked hard to get that honey back!

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.