Fair Time

The Spokane Fair just wrapped up yesterday. I spent Friday at the bee club booth which was fun.

By far, the most popular exhibits were the observation hives. Everyone loves to try and find the queen, especially the kids. They were marked so it was pretty easy.

This was my favorite part of the booth! A blue ribbon for my cut comb honey sections. Those were a lot of work, though. Maybe next year we'll try to win the trophy for heaviest extracting frame. That would be cool!

It's also time to start getting the hives ready for winter. Already! I'm giving them a little boost with some sugar syrup and Honey Bee Healthy. Cam's hive has a lot of honey stores but Toby's hive and the former nuc (now a two-deep 8 frame) could be heavier so they have feeders on right now. It's amazing how fast they can empty a gallon feeder: only 3-4 days.

Buckets and Jars

This can only mean one thing:

Honey time! I spent hours in the basement bathroom with the heat cranked on high (to keep the honey flowing) filtering and bottling honey.

I got 230 pounds from Bill and there's still more to go! That's 250 total so far if you include the comb honey. 

Lots and lots of jars to clean, label, and put ribbons on. Amazingly enough, all of the quarts and pints were sold (or already pre-ordered) within a week! I still have a bunch of half and quarter pint jars that are good for gifts or samples.

Oy! The cleanup is almost done but I'll have to do it again later this month for batch #2. That'll be a lot smaller though: only a couple of supers.

Meanwhile, the bees are getting ready to hunker down for the winter: kicking out the drones and topping off food stores. There's still lots of honey left for them!