Friday 30th August 2013 ~ Hive Inspection

Hive inspection with trainees

Esmé having a little more hive experience

Will in his bee-suit for the first time

Checking out the brood box

 Will actually managing to see eggs on his first try

Bees, bees, bees

Loads of bees and yellow footprints over the tops of the frames.

Today we did quite a reshuffle of super frames

We took the three frames of stores from the top super and put them into the lower frame taking the empty three from the lower super and put into the top.
We then put the crown-board between the supers

The bees were quite calm but very busy with just a couple of pesterers

Sunday 25th August 2013 ~ Honey Harvest

Honey Harvest ~ The jarring up

 

The scrapings from the spinner barrel on home-made  wholemeal bread

 Percy fitted a tap to a 5 litre bucket for easier bottling

The first jar

 Using the grand-children's cooking step

Final drips

Looking jars from above; it looks like capped honeycomb!!

 

 Our 11lbs of Honey :-)

 Lovely colour

We are doing our bit!!!

~ Just a spare jar  really ~

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11113964

And finally today......

We gave the bees back their cappings tonight which we hope they will pick over and leave us cleaner wax to melt down.

They weren't very happy when we took their lid off but maybe they thought we were robbers; can't think why!!!

Saturday 24th August 2013 ~ Hive Inspection

We did a hive inspection and returned the super for the bees to clean up and restock if they want. We had taken honey from only 6 of the frames feeling that was enough and not too greedy leaving enough for the bees themselves.

A frame from the other super showing that the bees have started to cap the honey cells here; the cappings are very yellow compared to the paler ones from the other super earlier in the year. 

 Close up

Percy shook this frame to see the colours
Beautiful collection of pollen

 We have returned to super with the 6 frames of honey removed
There seem to be different views on this but as we have only taken some of the honey we thought it made more sense to leave the bees to sort it out themselves

Saturday 24th August 2013 ~ Our First Harvest

Our First Harvest

We decided that we could take some honey from our hive this year

We hadn't expected to be able to given the size of our tiny colony back in April

We thought we would only spin 4 of the frames in the super we had removed but in the end we decided to spin 6; we hope the girls forgive us!

 

On your marks!

 

Capping tool in action

Cappings

And into the tangential spinner

HONEY!!!

 

 Frame two

 

Spinning

Honey in the bottom

Empty combs

 Honey and froth

 Liquid gold :-)

Sunday 18th August 2013 ~ Hive Inspection

Post super removal inspection

We feel we need to check that the colony is still putting down stores and so we can decide how much to risk taking from them this season.

There seems to be plenty of nectar in the super but not much capping has gone on since last week. Also a fair amount of nectar and pollen in the brood box.

Here are a few photos from today; especially some pollen sacs :-)

Bright orange pollen

Pale yellow pollen

 

Very busy around the hive after the inspection

This normally reverts to calm quite quickly but today took longer and an hour later when we tried to have a cup of tea out there we were pestered and eventually came in but not before Percy got a sting on his ear :-( Very painful....