...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.

...making honey

 

Well, the bees are finally capable of living off their own honey supplies. We removed the feeder containing sugar water and replaced the 3rd super with frames. Rachel and I have both decided to purchase 2 more supers in the hopes that we will have excess honey to take off the hive in August.

 

We took a close look at what the bees had been doing.  The frames below show the bee's progress.  Bees usually structure their hives by placing eggs in the center of the hive, pollen storage around that, and honey stores on the outside edge.   You can see this in the pictures below.  The capped eggs are a pale yellow color.  The pollen is dark yellow/brown.  The sugar water/honey supply is white.

 

Below are a few pictures of drone cells that were ripped apart when we separated the hive boxes.  Bees will build what is called burr comb in spaces that are abnormal such as frames being placed too far apart or in between hive boxes.  Bees prefer to lay drone cells in the burr comb.  Below you can see the drone larvae.  Some of the larva have developed eyes and legs. 

 

Drones and worker cells are very different in appearance.  Below is a good example.  When the bees cap their eggs, the drone cells appear raised as you can see on the right side of the photo.  The remaining cells are worker cells.  Worker cells are in the middle of the picture, and they appear flat.  

...adding a super

The bees have been working very hard and have built out (made honey comb) all 8 frames in the bottom super or hive box. So it was time to add another super to the hive today. Rachel and I along with our helper Curt checked on the progress in the hive and added another super.

...finding the Queens

On Sunday, we had our first bee class!  There are 12 beekeepers in the class and 1 master beekeeper who leads the class.  Marcus is the master beekeeper.  The class is set up so that we all go through each individual hive.  As we went through the hives on Sunday, we realized how important this was to our learning experience.  All the hives were totally different.  The goal of the day was to make sure the queen survived the hiving process and that she was active in the hive.  These were the things we were looking for: the queen, brood (eggs or larvae), pollen and sugar water storage and retrieval of the queen box.  Any of these things individually or in combination will inform us if the queen is alive and well.  So here is a rundown of the day:

1. Rachel almost lights her car on fire.  We lit our smokers for the first time.  Our vague instructions were to put pine needles in the smoker and light it.  What we learned: Pine needles are really flammable and don't light the smoker in your trunk.  I'm very sorry that I didn't have my camera out when the smoker was sitting in Rachel's car.

2. The first beekeeper's hive didn't accept the queen.  The colony decided to supercede (dethrone) her. Here's is how we discovered this:  Her queen had obviously made it through the hiving process and she began to lay eggs because there were several capped cells (I will show you a picture of this later), but there were also queen cells.  A queen cell is a capped cell that holds an egg that the workers have decided to raise as a queen.  The egg is fed royal jelly by the workers and therefore becomes a queen bee capable of laying eggs.  The queen cell looks very different from the other capped cells. 

3.  The remaining hives all had queens.  The queens were able to escape out of their original box.  Eight of the hives had queens who had already laid eggs.  Some of the eggs had developed into larvae.  Some of the larvae had been capped meaning they were ready to go through the pupa stage of development.  One of the hives had no visible eggs or larvae.  Marcus said that the eggs are very small when just laid so we might have missed them.  We were able to locate the queen in this hive, and there was plenty of pollen indicating that the workers were making food for brood.  The white in the bottom right corner of this frame is stored sugar water.  The dark yellow closer to the center of the frame is stored pollen.  The whitish/yellow area in the middle of the frame is capped cells. 

In the picture above, you see a hole in the comb.  The bees sometimes chew a hole through the comb to create easy access to the frame on either side.  Marcus calls this the raceway. 

4. Rachel found Queen Gwenevere!

5. I found Queen Priscilla!

 Can you find the queen?