Drone Layer

It's not just about the honey in August. I've got to make sure the hives are in good shape to raise the "fat bees" this fall that will over-winter.

One queen had a problem that I'd heard about but not seen yet.

This frame had a lot of pollen and honey in the corners and lots of open brood but something was wrong. It's easy to see the queen cell on the left. What's going on?

Here's a closer look. Can you see how the capped cells poke out instead of looking flat?

This is almost all drone brood. The queen was laying worker brood a few weeks ago but then she stopped and is only laying drones. She was a supersedure from almost two years ago (born in August) and I think she didn't have enough drones to mate with and has run out of sperm. 

The good news is that she was showing signs of winding down and I replaced her with a new queen earlier in the summer. I put the old queen in a nuc because I didn't have the heart to kill her. I was hoping the nuc would produce some honey frames for the bank before it petered out at the end of summer. 

I didn't want thousands of drones hatching out in the bee yard, so I had to pull those frames and stuck them in the freezer to kill the brood. There's still a nice supply of honey and pollen in there so those will go back in the big hives to recycle.

Next up: mite control! Yikes.

Selling Honey

I'm spending my evenings in a tiny shower in the basement bottling honey. It's hot work: I crank the electric heater to warm the room and the honey flows faster that way. 

Of course it drips so it's a very hot, very sticky job. I started schlepping it to work this week. Time to bring the honey to the masses! 

It's $8/pint and $15/quart. $50/gallon for the serious enthusiasts.

What to do with that delicious honey? Here's my breakfast (almost every day):

Homemade granola made with our honey, yogurt, blueberries and lots of honey on top. Yum!

Honey Harvest

It's that time of year again!

Jon and I just finished loading up 20 supers for extracting. My friend Yolands is taking them to her place for extracting. I can't wait to see how much we get.

Now the bees are back in the two deeps and looking a little crowded.

So much easier to work them now!

Next up: getting ready for winter. Hard to think about when it's almost 90 degrees but I have to get these hives in good shape before the cold hits. Two of the hives have low mite counts and look nice but #2 is high and the queen is either MIA or on vacation. I didn't see any eggs or open brood yesterday. Yikes. Time to treat those mites and figure out if that hive is queen right or not. Drone production is way down already so I can't trust the hive to re-queen itself..... There's always something to worry about!