Search This Blog

Thursday, September 29, 2011

Wild Hive Bottling Done

Earlier this week, I finally finished crushing and bottling the last of the honey from the wild hive extraction.  I tried several methods to extract the honey, but what seemed to work best at this time was to gently warm 1 inch strips of comb in the oven for about 4 minutes, but squeeze the honey out.  Long processes...hard process on the hands!  I believe I squeezed out around 7 gallons of honey!  Let me tell you, using frames and an extractor is much easier!

Saturday, September 24, 2011

Effingham Old Settlers Day

Today was Old Settlers Day in Effingham on the old courthouse lawn.  The Crossroads Beekeepers had a tent set up featuring all kinds of information about beekeeping including a large assortment of suits, a regular and top bar hive, and honey from three different beekeepers.  I sold just under 30 bottles of honey from the Gates extraction on Labor Day.  The day was a lot of fun!

Below is the booth with Rick showing his topbar hive in the back, Dick selling Lance's honey on the left, my display under the Got Bees? sign, and Dave's honey display on the right.


Here is a closer view of my display.

Saturday, September 10, 2011

Two Queens

Today, Jessica & I went to the farm between activities to check on the new hive from the extraction on Labor Day; we met Dawn there following her trip up North.  As I looked through the hive frame by frame I found the queen I marked on Monday, and placed her frame back in the hive.  Two or three frames later I found another queen!  I suddenly spoke, "By golly, it was two hives."  I quickly gathered a few hive components and split this hive with one queen in each hive.

I also did a quick look at some of the other hives and found the Kull hive was not in good shape with very low numbers and poor laying pattern; this hive will not survive winter, so I need to start planning my winter preps to allow as many hives to survive winter as possible.

Monday, September 5, 2011

Mother of All Extractions!!!

Today, Dawn & I drove to the home of Nic and Candy Gates between Greenup and Charleston.  They had an old shed with a hive between the walls that needed removed.  As Nic and I tore into the shed we discovered that this was not a typical removal, but the Mother of All Extractions (at least in my book).  As you can see in the below photo, this hive was quite large.  I'm estimating we vaccuumed up 20 pounds of bees and removed over 100 pounds of comb. 


 

Here is a close up photo of the honey comb on the right panel.



And this is the Nic & Candy, who have learned more about bees today than they were expecting!