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.

More bees

Today we drove to the small town of Vittoria, between Bathurst and Orange, to pick up our bees. All the way there were white butterflies flitting across the road, but we only hit one on the whole trip.

The bees were being sold in carboard boxes from the back of a truck (which I stupidly forgot to photograph). We had lunch at the cafe out front, then drove on down the track to where the truck was parked. They handed over our box and we put it in the boot, with one seat-back down so the air-con would keep the bees cool. We drove with the windows open for a while to let a few loose bees escape.



At dusk we began to move the bees to their new home. I'd spent an hour yesterday shredding paperbark to put in the smoker. Graham is much better at lighting a smoker than I am. I donned my beekeeping outfit, removed the beehive lid and measured how many frames I had to remove to fit the box in. I smoked the outside of the box, then removed the lid and smoked the inside. The queen cage was wired inside the box so I unwound the wire and pulled it out. It took a while to figure out how to open the cage, but between us Graham and I managed it. I hooked the wire over the top of one of the remaining frames. Put the lid back on and we were done.




Graham was very brave taking these photos, as he was dressed only in shorts, thongs and t-shirt, and several bees landed on him.

Bee weekend

As part of the OTEN course on beekeeping, I had to attend a practical session at the bee garden at Sutherland. Looking at the list of things I had to be able to do, I was rather concerned as I'd only been to a couple of field days at the North Shore Beekeepers bee garden, and never actually worked with the bees myself.

Three of us were at the practical session, and I think I had the most experience of the lot. I managed to light a smoker, open a hive, locate the queen, mark a drone, graft day-old larvae into queen cells, pick up a branch holding a swarm, and not get stung once.

Birds and bees

Apparently bees in a swarm don't sting, because they're not defending a hive.

See?

And we'd been blaming possums, but this morning I saw a currawong at the tomatoes, and here is the result: