...sweating in the hive

This title refers to what Rachel and I were doing when we checked on the bees yesterday afternoon. The thermometer at my house read 109 degrees. Turns out this is too hot to put on long sleeves, pants, shoes, and a bee hood. As we went into the hives, sweat dripped through my hood onto my bees. I think they prefer sweet rather than salt. We were glad we looked in on them though. In a week and a half, they have completely filled and capped the majority of the 1st honey super and have built out comb and started to fill the 2nd honey super. We are very hopeful to take honey off the hive in the next month or so. We can't wait for everyone to taste it!

...tasting and stinging

Rachel and I had bee school today.  It was such a great day.  Many of our frames were completely filled with honey.  You can see the capped honey in the above frame.  These frames were located in the 3rd super on the outside edges of the box.  The middle frames still had brood in them.

A look into the 3rd super.  So many bees!

We added a super to the top of the stack making it 4 boxes high.  Before adding a super, we removed two frames from the 3rd box that were full of honey (no brood or eggs).  We put these frames into the middle of the top super.  We replaced the frames from the 3rd super with empty frames.  The goal of this exercise was to establish a honey line in the surplus honey super (4th or top super).  Marcus (our mentor) told us that this honey line will often keep the queen from moving up to the surplus honey supers if you don't use an excluder.  Moving the frames also means moving the bees that were on the frame.  So now there are established frames and bees in the 4th super.  I also put a queen excluder between my 3rd and 4th supers to keep the queen out of the top boxes.  From the research I have done, many master beekeepers do not use excluders.  I, however, am nowhere close to being a master, and I worry about not being able to locate my queen when I extract honey.  If she is in the top honey super, I risk hurting her on accident. 

Adding 2 additional frames in 3rd super.

All honey in this frame

Removing a frame full of honey to add to the top super

The queen excluder

The 4th super...surplus honey!

When Rachel removed her inner lid, she had a good bit of burrcomb filled with honey.  We scraped the comb and honey to take home.  Our first taste of Priscilla and Gwenevere's honey was delicious, and we can't wait for you all to try it!

We scraped all this comb and honey off and deposited it in our bellies

We scraped this off too.  I'm drinking it in my tea right now!

Cup full of honey...and bees...and comb

So proud of ourselves until Rachel pointed out that we did nothing except give the bees a place to live :)

 Little did we know that our adventure was not over.  As we were driving home, Rachel started screaming.  Turns out one of those little worker bees found its way into Rachel's car and stung her for taking it so far away from home.  She handled it like a champ.  There is a little swelling as you can see below, but she reports relatively painless after the initial sting.  I stood by with my epi-pen.  I tried to get her to let me test it out...she declined.

Right pinky sting

Swollen right pinky

...building more supers

Our bees have been so quick in their honey making that we decided to buy more supers. I went to Pigeon Mountain Trading Company in LaFayette, GA.  They have very reasonably priced supplies.  Because I am cheap, I decided to save $10 and assemble my own hive parts.  I bought 2 medium hive boxes, 16 frames, 16 honeycomb foundations, and a queen excluder.  I am glad I made the decision to assemble my own hive parts for two reasons: it wasn't very difficult to put them together and I enlisted some help from my wonderful husband!  With the purchase of these hive boxes, I have the potential to gain 70 lbs of additional honey.  CRAZY!!! 

Un-assembled Frames

Here is a description of the above parts:

- Medium hive boxes come in 4 pieces un-assembled.  These boxes hold 8 frames each.

- Frames come in 4 pieces as well.  These take the longest to assemble due to installing the foundation inside each frame.

- Foundations are made of honeycomb and must be secured into each frame.

- A queen excluder is a metal or plastic grate that sits above your brood boxes (the boxes containing eggs; usually 2 or 3 boxes).  The excluder keeps the queen from moving into the surplus honey boxes.  This keeps your queen from laying brood in the boxes and keeps her safe when you remove the frames to extract honey.

Un-assembled Frames

Un-assembled Boxes

I also came up with a new way of painting the boxes.  This saved so much time and energy.  I hung the assembled boxes on a pole.  As I painted a side, I was able to turn the box and paint another side.  I also used a paint gun to paint.  The paint gun was only worth it because I was painting Rachel's hives as well.  Note to self, paint guns are a pain to clean.