Ready...set....harvest!

So I worked the Rochester fair bee booth yesterday from 2-6. Getting there was interesting. First, I had to figure out where Rochester was (it's sort of between Carver, Wareham, and Lakeville). The fair had a website but NO directions. I googled the directions (565 Roundsville Rd.) and printed them out. Halfway there, just as I crossed Rt. 28, there was a huge accident in front of a vegetable stand, and the police were rerouting traffic. Oh, crud. I pulled off the road and tried to use Navigator on my phone to figure out how to get to 565 Roundsville, and I couldn't find the road. I tried to remember the roads in the intersection where the fair is from online, and I did a pretty good job at figuring it out. I was only seven minutes late...that is, until the nice police officer made me turn left and park a half mile away from the fairgrounds!!! I schlepped my equipment up to the bee booth at about 2:20. Sigh.

After the inauspicious beginning, though, it was fun. It was RURAL, but it was fun. I mean, come on. Where else on earth could you watch a ride-on lawnmower race? Our discussions with our patrons were quite often interrupted by the lecherous blacksmith to our right, the lowing cows and goats at the petting zoo to our left, or the tub racing announcements at the main field in front of us. It was very funny!

As we were packing up, I finally got to meet Jeannie, a woman who I've emailed back and forth to. She's the education coordinator for the bee club. She told me a rather alarming story of her first year of beekeeping, when she kept the supers (they are the shorter honey collection chambers at the top of the hive) on until she was ready to extract, and the bees ATE THE HONEY!!! Like, ALL of it. Yikes!

So today, I decided I was taking off my supers. Or at least those frames that were ready. And boy, that was an experience. I'm chalking it up to one more thing I wasn't accurately prepared for.

First of all, I try not to do bee work anymore because of the daycare behind me. The last thing I want is to have agitated bees and kids walking around nearby. Secondly, and here's a newsflash: BEES DO NOT LIKE HAVING HONEY TAKEN FROM THEM!! They made it, they worked HARD to cure it, and they are not very happy when a big bearlike human dismantles their hive and steals it. Third, I had no clue what to do with it when I got it out and no equipment!!

In the end, I only got three frames off. There were seven full frames of honey, but four of them need a little bit more capping (that's when they seal the honey) until they are ready to be extracted. I ended up having to make three new frames to replace the ones I took. I'd been hoping to reduce to one super, but it didn't work out that way. There weren't enough empty frames to do so already in the hive.

I put them in a clear bag (Jeannie said to do this because the wax moths need the dark) and brough them in the house, but now I don't know what to do. I either extract (and therefore need access to an extractor) or I crush and strain (which seems like an awful waste of, well, everything...you basically ruin the wax on the frames and you surely don't get much out of them!! So I guess now I store them and hope that I get near an extractor before the wax moths get near them. I think I'll stick them in the freezer, I've seen that as a suggestion.




One thing is for sure...I am SO not taking honey off of Joel's hive alone. Those bees are what they call in the bee world "hot", and I am too nervous about them to even try. So I'm going to ask him to join me to remove his honey. And then hopefully all four of us "newbees" will be able to put our heads together and do the extraction thing.

Three bee tales

Greetings and salutations! I haven't had a lot to post for the month of July and into August because I haven't really been going into the hives quite as much. I figured let them do their thing while the honey flow was on, you know?

Last weekend, Joel and I made a foray into our hives. He had 2 supers on, I had one. His was ready for another super and mine looked like it was getting close!! Unfortunately, we didn't have the equipment ready, so I told him I'd take care of his on Wednesday and work on mine this weekend. I really don't like going into the hives midweek any more because of the whole spraying incident behind us.

On Wednesday I had two bee experiences. First, my bee friend Sandy had a big issue with her "left hive" (she has two). Apparently, she lost a queen. The bees "made" a new queen, but she couldn't find evidence of the new queen in the hive. She saw no eggs, no larva, no queen (granted, hunting for an unmarked queen is like trying to find a needle in a haystack), and a dwindling population. Her right hive continues to thrive, so she was very concerned. She ended up getting a new queen from one of our mentors, Everett, who also runs an apiary supply business. Here's what he told her:

"Put the queen cage in your hive. Don't poke an opening into the cage (the queen cage is usually plugged up with "candy" which looks like nougat or a marshmallow, and you poke a hole in it with a needle and the bees eat their way through to release the queen). Instead, check her in five days. If the bees are attacking her and trying to kill her, your natural-born queen is alive and well. If not, release her, the hive needs a new queen."

Doesn't that just sound MEAN??? Not to mention, the new queen was an Italian queen, and very tiny compared to her hive, which is full of Carniolan Goldline workers. The Carniolan queen is a pretty big bee!

So she asked me to come help her on Wednesday. We opened the hive, couldn't figure out if the bees liked the new queen or not, although she seemed to be cowering in the part of the cage that wasn't open to the workers. But lo and behold! we found eggs in one of the deep chamber frames. That means that the queen that hatched is alive and well!!

So I guess she returned the Italian queen to Everett. I'll have to ask her what the fate of the queen was. Queen bees are expensive!! It can run you anywhere from $20 to a couple hundred bucks, depending on the quality and breeding of the queen.

Being that I was in the swing of bee-checking now, I decided to risk it and throw Joel's third super on at home. I figured it wouldn't take me more than 10 minutes to do so. I opted not to smoke them, which was a really big mistake.

Joel's bees, as I've mentioned, are way more aggressive than my hive, which may explain why they also have more honey. So when I opened them up, the aggression "scream" hit fever pitch almost immediately, and I had a bunch gather on my veil and start pinging my head. Things got worse as I dismantled the supers (I wanted to put the new super right above the first chamber to make them fill it faster, and I had to pull a frame from one of the full chambers to put in the new super to attract them to it in the first place). I wasn't too freaked out until I realized that there were several bees IN my veil. Apparently I had slit my veil somehow. Oh, the drama! I miraculously peeled one off that had attached on my lip, and I did a couple fast laps around the house, screeching like a banshee. I ended up with two IN the house after all that, and had to shoo them out after giving them a few minutes to calm down. And I STILL had to go put the outer cover back on after all that. Ugh. It was awful. I don't know how I didn't get stung.

Today, I had my kids help me put together ten frames so that I could put a second super on my hive if need be. I wasn't too psyched to go into a hive, but you know what they say about getting back on the bike....and besides, I was working with my sweet, gentle bees. And you bet your sweet bippy that I was going to smoke this time. And I borrowed Joel's (unpunctured) veil to do the job.

My older daughter ended up being an ace at putting the support pins in, so we banged out those 10 frames in no time. I lined them up in a new super and hauled them to the hive. Sure enough, they needed another super! Yay! I swapped out a full frame for a new frame on super #1 and threw the new one on top. I grabbed another full frame, swept the bees off, and brought it into the house to show the kids. There's nothing like bringing in a full frame from the hive to make people jump off your couch and run for cover! I made double sure, though, that no actual bees were on the frame when I brought it in.

As it turned out, I had made a small hole in one of the corners by accident, so I allowed them to dip their fingers in to taste it. Even my husband tried it. The verdict unanimously was "DELICIOUS!!" I wish I had tasted it now too!!! But I still had my veil on. I suppose I could have taken it off, but I was covered in honey and I didn't want to get everything sticky.

So....when you do the math, it looks something like this. If a medium frame is filled side to side, top to bottom, both sides, with honey, you get about 4.33 pounds of honey from it. If you have one super full of honey, then (as I do), you have a little over 40 pounds of honey. Joel has two supers full, and perhaps he'll get a full third one, and I'll get a little more, so let's assume we each get another half super. That means I'll get about 60 pounds and he'll have ONE HUNDRED pounds! Local honey is selling for $6-$7 a pound, which means that we'll have a decision to make. If Joel sells 50 pounds of honey, he can make back the cost of the hive startup, and keep the other half. I'd have to sell most of mine to make up the cost, but I don't think I want to do that. I'd like to sell some, but keep the most for Christmas presents and cooking use.

Here's food for thought...I read an article yesterday that warns that we may have a HUGE sugar shortage building up over the next 18 months. There was too much rain in Brazil this year and not enough in India...and they are the two biggest suppliers of US sugar. I wonder how many people will turn to honey if that is true? Honey prices could soar if it is. Of course, we apiarists will be faced with a challenge of feeding them in the spring and fall (since you supplement with sugar). Huh. Something to think about.