Spring bees

We'd been meaning to do a Spring inspection of the beehive since Spring began, but first I was sick, then the weather was too windy, then we were too busy. So it's late Spring before the hive got a look.

First thing I saw on taking off the lid was that all the frames were full of capped honey. We only had four spare wax foundation sheets! So I removed four frames and left the rest for another day.

Then I thought I'd better have a look at the brood. Unfortunately there isn't much friction between the base board and the hive stand, so every time I tried to jamb the hive tool between the bottom boxes, the whole hive tried to slide away. So I put that aside for another day too.

So much for allowing the colony to swarm causing it to be weak and not produce honey.

Honey

Last time I looked, the bees had made four frames of mostly capped honey (two frames fully capped, two frames ¾ capped. So I bought some more frames and took the full ones out.

I thought I'd use the crush-and-strain method as described on Lisa and Robb's blog.I bought a double honey strainer from an ebay seller and put it over my biggest pot. It fits pretty well. Then I scraped the caps off the comb with a special scraping tool like a wide fork, and cut it out to fall (hopefully) in the strainer. Then I chopped it up a bit more and left it to drain.

When it stopped dripping through, I put the remaining comb into my second-biggest pot to be melted down and clarified. I did this for three of the four frames I'd taken out of the hive, but then the honey level reached the bottom of the sieve so I put the last frame away to extract later.

The honey from the three frames filled three large jars and four smaller (vegemite) jars, with a little left over. Not sure what to do with that.



Nice colour.

I spilled a bit. Hosed it down so it shouldn't encourage robbing by bees from other hives. I hope.

It took me all morning (and there's still honey in the pot, and that extra frame of comb). My hands are sticky with propolis. I hope the honey's good.

Mother centipede

Graham decided he'd never use the remaining sandstone blocks from the subfloor walls of the old house, so he loaded them into the ute to take to the tip. Under the rockpile he found

a mother centipede with babies clinging to her belly. However, they were being attacked by ants and eventually the mother ran away to the remaining rocks, leaving he babies to their fate.