Saturday, February 23, 2013

Honey In The Dale 2013

The new label designed as a Christmas present and I do love my bee.
Randy showed up unexpectedly on Friday.  He had been working out of town.  He asked about the bees and I mentioned needing to do an inspection.  The Spring bee activity had just picked up over the last few days.   Randy offered to give me a hand and then showed up the next day with a co-worker who had never been near a bee hive.  Randy and Chris check out the hive.  The number five super had some wax but no honey.  This is number four, it was loaded with honey end to end.

Some was dark from the last year but there were several frames that were very nice and clean looking. Some of this may have just been added this Spring.  The bees were extremely calm.  None of them made a single aggressive move towards us. Super 4 was jammed with honey and #3 looked to be the same.   We swapped out all the frames in #4 and left the rest of the hive alone.
I had chipped some wood off the super so we swapped it for another one.  After we cut the comb out of the old frames Randy put them back in the replacement super.

Randy is not a fan of his pictures so i made sure to add one for him.
Chris with a frame of new honey.  He was shocked at the weight.  We pulled out about 60# of honey & wax. 

The first of the honey draining.   This will continue until tomorrow some time.  There should be a nice amount of honey and it will sport the new label too.