Birdchick

This blog post is not only an update for those curious about the going’s on, but also to serve as notes for how we prep the hives this fall.  What’s nice about a blog is that is kind of a nice notebook.  Also, Mr. Neil would like an update on our bees while he is traveling the world.

After last year when our bees were okay in February and then dying in March, moisture appeared to be part of the problem, so we tried a variety of solutions.  One being Mr. Neil’s groundskeeper named Hans went out and cleared snow away from the bottom entrances.  We also had him go ahead and remove the insulation, last year was a colder winter and we left it on longer.  But the bees had been quite active and it’s been so warm (it hit 60 degrees yesterday) that Hans took it off last week.  We didn’t put the insulation on until late last fall, they should be able to take it if we dip down into the twenties again.

The green hive was three deep brood boxes this winter which is what I was taught we should do at the University of Minnesota’s beekeeping short course.  She’s been fairly noisy all winter.  The bees had taken advantage of the warm days and pooped up a storm (they don’t poop in the hive so hold it up all winter and then let her rip on warm spring days).  We used a wooden entrance reducer on her–to control the flow of air from below and prevent mice from entering the hive.  She also had a piece of board on top, above the ceiling to absorb moisture during the winter.  It appeared to have worked, there was a little moisture on the board, a little mold, but none on the ceiling or top of the brood box itself.

This hive also has a slatted rack which is supposed to discourage swarming. Also a beekeeper told me that it’s somehow supposed to aid in ventilation.  I’m not sure, I think it’s one of those things where a beekeeper noticed less moisture in the hive when they have had it in there.  I took out the entrance reducer and used my hive tool to clear out some of the dead bees at the bottom to help with air flow and give the girls more room to work.  The bodies were wet,  I cleared out the bee pieces until a few live workers flew out from the bottom.  There was a nice, noisy active cluster of bees at the top of the hive.  I placed a feeder pail of nectar on top and added a pollen patty to help get them trough the next couple of weeks.  I tweaked all the pollen patties this time with a little actual honey from our stores.  I also brought each hive a piece of comb honey, more for my own benefit than anything else, kind of like a hive warming present.

This was a hive I did not expect to survive the winter.  She swarmed late in the summer last and I let her do it– no heroic measures to stop it, even though I thought it a bad move on her part.  She went into the winter with just two brood boxes of food and a very small cluster.  Some beekeepers do keep their hives down to a 2 box system in winter–even our neck of the woods so she had a chance.  She was one of the most active hives I visited yesterday.  The green hive had the most workers moving in and out of the entrance, this one had the second largest highway going.  I even took some video down by her opening at the metal entrance reducer.  If you watch at the bottom left at the beginning you might notice a worker removing a dead body:

Impressive activity!  I left on her entrance reducer because the bees seemed to be getting out at the bottom and top easily.  Mice are still somewhat of an issue but the reducer will probably come off in early April if the weather holds.

This hive does not have a slatted rack on the bottom but has four inner covers on the top and the moisture board.  If you look at the board on top–it has a wet spot.  I’d say it did it’s job rather well.  The ceilings were dry inside this hive which I think aided in her survival.

The purple hive was a wee bit quieter but still active.  She went into the winter with three deep brood boxes, moisture board, double ceilings but no slatted bottom.

The workers were not coming out of the bottom, but using the top hole to poop, remove some dead bees and if you look closely you can see a forager returning with some yellow pollen baskets!

When I removed the entrance reducer, some of the dead, wet bees at the entrance had grown some fungus.  It was just at the entrance and scraped out piles of dead bees from the bottom until a few live ones flew out.  There was a good ball of bees at the top and they were very excited about the feeder pail and pollen patty.

I wasn’t sure what to expect of this hive.  She’d been fairly quiet all winter.  You had to really press your ear up to the insulation to hear anything.  Her exit hole at the top of the hive was smaller than the others (barely enough room for one bee to come out and no one ever seemed to come out of the bottom.  She had three deep brood boxes, a wooden entrance reducer, a slotted bottom and a moisture board.  Bees took turns coming in and out of the top entrance.  I opened the top and she was very lively.  I put up the feeder pail and pollen patty.  You can see a video here (and see a worker come in with loaded pollen baskets while the others nom the feeder pail and nom nom nom the pollen patty.

After I removed the entrance reducer and started to scrape out debris, I couldn’t help but notice that there were very few bee parts and an awful lot of wood shavings.  This did not look good.  I had a suspicion of what was going down–a mouse had moved into the hive for the winter.  Bastard!  The bees had a good harmonious hum going and this was a three deep box.  I wondered if maybe the mouse had kept to the bottom while the bees were on top?  Was this hive through or could it be saved? I had no choice, I had to open her up.

The mouse did not chew up from the base, it looked like it squeeze right through the tiny hole left by the wooden entrance reducer.  Then chewed through the slatted bottom and made its nest there.  The mouse worked it’s way into the bottom brood box and ate quite a bit of the honey and wax, however it did not appear to have gone up into the top two brood boxes and there was still some food left there.

The mouse had chewed into the wax foundation of some of the bottom frames (hope it got a good tummy ache).  Looking at photos of other mice in beehive stories, this is typically where the mouse builds the nest.  Did this mouse get interrupted?  I scraped out the bottom board and found no mouse–not even a propolis covered mouse mummy.

I did find a couple of ginormous owl pellets near the hives.  Perhaps the local great horned owl took care of the mouse for me?  Maybe I’ll find it’s skull when I dissect these?

The hive otherwise seemed healthy.  I replaced the base board, and removed the bottom box, making this a two brood box hive like the red hive.  I put a third and empty box over the feeder pail and pollen patty.  I’ll be curious to see how this hive does over the next two weeks.

I always knew mice were a possibility and we’ve had them try and get in the hives before when we find their telltale tracks in the snow leading to the entrances.  Usually a well placed snap trap does the trick but this time we didn’t see any tracks.  The good news is that all four hives are still going and appear to be ready for this summer’s honey production.  We’ll feed all four for as long as they seem to need it.

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We’re getting 60 degrees around here and I took a moment to check on our hives.  It’s looking to be a much happier scenario this year than last year when we had only two colonies.  We had one that was weak that we thought would die and one that was huge and sounded healthy.  By February, all seemed fine.  By the end of March, both were about dead.

Thanks to the help of Hans and a lucky streak in the weather, we’re in a much better situation this year with our four hives.  I’ll post more later this morning, but here’s a teaser from yesterday.  I gave the girls some feeder pails and many foragers were out and about already returning with big baskets of pollen.  I wondered where they were getting pollen?  Trees I suppose.  The only flowers I saw blooming were snow bells but I don’t think there are enough of those out there to justify the bulbous baskets on my girls’ legs.  Here’s a short video of happy bees on a snowy day:

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I’m loving this spring prick tease we are getting right now. Yeah, I said it, I went there.  Let’s face it: it’s March 1 and we’re getting a sort of thaw in the upper 30s and 40s and some much needed snow melt is underway. Large chucks of snow people Non Birding Bill and I made on Christmas Day in a neighbor’s yard still linger. However, facts must be faced and spring is far off.  I love this photo of the creek with flowing water and ice. Some of the water is so still that you can see a perfect reflection of the trees on the banks.

Mr. Neil describes this as Spring making promises to stay for good but we know all too well that she is currently a one night fling and will be frolicking in the southern US the next morning. More snow will come and hearts will be broken several times over before the end of April. Yet, Cabal, Mr. Neil and Non Birding Bill took advantage of the sun and the warm temps and I trudged through the snow to our beehives.

All four are still alive! The bees were very active today and may flew about.  I watched on bee leave the hive, fly down by the snow, relieve herself and head back towards the hive. Others flew to the tops of the trees as if to head out on the bee super highway in search of pollen and propolis. The white snow in the bee yard is littered with be poop and dead bees but if you put your ear to the hives, buzzing can be heard inside.

Some bees were busy pushing dead ones out of the hive. I love the above photo. In the center is one live bee surrounded by dead bees, bee parts and snow. Life forges ahead despite the elements.

After we checked the hives, I went over to a nearby wood duck box NBB and I set up years ago.  I think it’s a perfect spot for wood ducks to nest, but they do not seem to agree with me.  A house wren did, but not wood ducks.  This winter I suspected an eastern screech owl has been periodically roosting the box because I’ve found red screech owl feathers.  Today, it looked like a woodpecker had done some renovations around the opening. I opened the side and felt down around the cedar bedding.

I found a ton of chickadee feathers and a very dry owl pellet.  The pellet contained the remains of a mouse not a chickadee.  I wonder if the small owls will only use this box for roosting.  I’d love to have one nesting but who can say if it will stay. Based on the amount of feathers in the box, I’m guessing the local chickadees will be happier if it nests elsewhere.

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I think I saw an honest to goodness sign of spring this weekend around Mr. Neil’s. I did a little driving to look for golden eagles again and I was stunned by the number of horned larks I flushed as I drove along the country roads.

This is a terrible photo of a horned lark–heat shimmer coming off my car does not make for good digiscoping–even with a window mount for my scope. You might be seeing horned larks in your area if you drive down rural roads. Horned larks are commonly seen but if you don’t know what to look for, you don’t know that they are there. When you see brown birds flush away from a rural road, watch for dark stripes on either side of the tail as they fly–that’s a horned lark. They are one of the first birds to return to Minnesota and when you see them that means spring migration is on.

I took a moment to watch the juncos since their time is limited here and they will flock up and eventually head north to their breeding grounds. We have so much snow everywhere. I heard on Minnesota Public Radio that there’s a 60% chance of big flooding of the Mississippi River this May and Harriet Island could be flooded. My national park’s visitor center is in the Science Museum of Minnesota which is right across the Mississippi River from Harriet Island…should make for some interesting photos if it floods.

I was surprised to find Mr. Neil at home when I stopped by to take photos of the feeders–he travels more than I do. He checked the hives while I was in Panama and did a wee blog about it. He took me out Saturday so we could see them fly out in the warm weather. All of the hives had little flecks of dull gold dots around the hives. The girls had been coming out for a poop. Hans had been doing a good job of helping our hives this winter. He’s been shoveling snow away from the entrances to hopefully help with the ventilation. We watched bees fly out of all four hives–even our red hive which is down to only 2 boxes instead of three like the other hives because she swarmed late in summer. I was surprised that all four were all still going despite some of our bone numbing freezing temperatures in January.

We know not to get too excited about this. Last winter at this time both our hives were in good shape and both died in late March so it ain’t over til it’s over. We discussed what our plan was. According to the bee class that I took, we should divide our hives this spring to prevent a swarm and save money by dividing one large hive in 2. If we actually get the Russians we ordered last year and are supposed to get this year…that could mean we’d have 9 – 10 hives this spring–YIKES.

Working with queens has been an exercise in heartache for us up to this point: queens arrive before we’re ready and die in the cage, queens die in the divide process, new queens are ordered and hives still fail and they get combined into one angry hive. If you have a serious honey operation–dividing hives makes sense if all goes well–one colony becomes two. We don’t have a money making honey operation. Neil and I talked about what could be so bad if our hives swarmed and the bees tried to strike out on their own into little feral colonies in his woods? We’d still have plenty of honey from the remaining hive and the feral colony would still pollinate his trees.

I think we will try and divide one hive but let the others go. We congratulated each other at our changing and easy going attitude towards bees. I don’t think we’re really going to name them anymore. Even if we do we tend to talk to each other about the hives in terms of their box color or in rare cases when a hive has a particular personality–like our ill-fated Lebowski hive (it was a total slacker hive and got robbed by another colony). Mr. Neil smiled that I was seeing the wisdom what he suggested all along–taking a Sue Hubbell approach to bees–the less you do to them, the better off they are. No personal involvement. We will appreciate their pollination, enjoy their honey and hand it out as gifts and watch their industrious nature towards survival with awe.

Then, we noticed a bee flying above us and land on the snow. The snow is so cold that once a bee lands on it, she struggles for about 60 seconds and then freezes to death. Mr. Neil scooped her up from the snow.

He brushed the snow away and breathed his warm breath on her to keep her going. She didn’t seem to anxious to leave his glove. He walked over to the top of the hive to set her down, she stayed on his glove. He decided to leave his glove on the hive for the bee to get her bearings and stay warm on the dark fleece in the sun and hopefully when her returned later to retrieve the glove the bee would gone and presumably have flown into her hive. I smiled as we walked away and said, “I’m glad we just had this conversation about being less involved with our bees and you picked one up from the snow, gave mouth to bee heat, and left your glove behind for her.”

He smiled and said, “And one has absolutely nothing to do with the other.”

Indeed. Ah, spring.

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Ah, where did the summer go?  I ask that on October 10 when we have had our first snow of the season–that’s a little insane, even for the Twin Cities.  I’m prepared for snow by Halloween, this is too early.  We have barely taken the full measures to get our hives ready for winter and already the snow has hit.  We only got a dusting and most of it melted but is was a brutal reminder nonetheless.

Kitty was in town and snapped most of the photos in this entry.  Above, I’m making fall nectar to help our bees get a little extra food stores in place before winter hits hard.  This concoction is even too much for hummingbirds.  Basically, I fill one of those pails with table sugar to the top and then add enough water to dissolve it.  It’s a heavy duty nectar recipe to fortify the hives for winter.  I mostly posted this photo to drive my mother crazy.  She’s not a fan of my recently acquired red hair, she feels that blond suits me better.

The pails go on the tops of the hive, above the ceiling so the workers can have easy access to the food.  As you can see from the above photo, the nectar is a hit with the girls.  They fly right to the pail even as we place it on the top of the hives.  So much is uncertain with the hives in the winter. You can have a seemingly healthy hive in the fall and then something unknown can go wrong over winter like too much moisture or the hive cluster travels too far from the stores starving to death because its too cold and slow to move to food elsewhere in the hive.  We hope all will go well and all will survive, but there’s a good possibility we could lose some, if not all of them.

All of the hives look like they have good stores.  Above, Kitty got a shot of a frame full of honey stores.  We like to see lots of this in the fall.  There was some concern that our red hive was failing, she was much quieter than our other hives and bee wolves were going into the hive.  It was by no means a dead hive, there were many workers, but I would say half the work force of our other hives.  This one had swarmed, had made a new queen and was producing larvae.  But half the hive was elsewhere in the woods starting a new colony.  Each brood box has a few empty frames in each box.  We rearranged the frames so that the the bottom two boxes were chock full and the top box had the empty frames.  Hopefully with the nectar pail up there, they will finish filling the top box and be good to go for the winter.

Some of the hives had some moisture in the top–deadly to a hive in winter.  We took those hives completely apart and put a ventilation base at the bottom to see if that would help.  From the massive amount of bees around and on Mr. Neil, you can see that they really were not too thrilled about the situation.  Here’s a video to give you an idea of the mood of the hive, we had just bumped the bottom box and the hive had gone from mildly irritated to PISSED.  You can hear me announcing how angry the hive was (I sound like Robbie the Robot, “Danger, Will Robinson, Danger!”  You can also hear bees bonking the camera warning they are about to sting.  Mr. Neil remains in a zen like trans:

Mr. Neil opted to without the full bee suit, going for the half bee suit, regular trousers with wellingtons.  This worked surprisingly well around the angry bees…even when I accidentally dropped a frame so full of bees that we could barely see the capped honey underneath right on his boot.  Half the bees fell to the ground, the other half landed somewhere on his person…mostly in the trouser region.  I froze like Ralphie in a Christmas Story when he looses the nuts for the spare tire, “Oh Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuudge,” I said in my hand.  Everyone else assessed the situation and the amount of bees gathering in a rather unfortunate area on Mr. Neil’s pants.

Mr. Neil quietly requested assistance, Hans (our muscle in the beekeeping operation) looked away.  Kitty just stared in wonder at all the bees around her.  I looked at Lorraine and said, “You’re the personal assistant, you can brush the bees away from his pants.”

He came out unscathed and all I can say is thank goodness for smokers and bee brushes.

Hans had a breech of security in his bee suit.  I felt bad, especially since before we walked to the hives, we were tossing around Letterman jokes and I threatened to create a hostile work environment for him.  Little did I know I would do that, but not in a wacky sexual way, more with a few thousand angry worker bees kind of way.  A worker found her way to the tender region between the bottom hem of his bee suit and the top of his shoe.  I tried to puff some smoke on the area to prevent the stinging bee’s pheromone from alerting others to sting the same area.  Alas, it was in vain, more bees rushed to Hans’s shoe and I think he got stung about five or six times.  Two bees got caught in his shoe laces and I think they attracted more angry workers.  Way more hostile than I intend.  I also got stung in the same area and learned that it’s true, the more I get stung, the less it hurts.  It’s still not pleasant, but it’s not the pulsating ouch fest like the first sting.

I love this shot of Kitty.  She’s covered in bees, getting the full experience but you can also see a couple of angry bees going right in to bonk her on the front screen of her bee suit.  She got some lovely photos.  Besides rearranging the hives, we took the last remaining honey supers back for extraction.  A few stragglers hid among the frames and followed us into the house.

One hid surreptitiously on the tea kettle.  What a clever girl!  The Englishman likes his tea and many people would prepare hot water throughout the day.  They would grab the handle to pour and then she would be ready to make her move and strike upon the unsuspecting fingers.

However, she was discovered and many photos were taken of her.  After a few rounds of the flashes of the camera she flew off to unknown regions of the house.  We hoped that like the rest of her friends that she found a way outside.  At the end of the day, I gathered all of my stuff to head home.

I turned to say goodbye and noticed a steady stream of smoke coming from the light above the kitchen table.  “Um, Kitty? Should that light be smoking?”

We stood on chairs to assess the situation.  I was still too short to see the cause, but Kitty looked inside and said that it was a honey bee.  It was at that point you could get a faint whiff of something smoky sweet.  Poor, tea kettle bee!  Her plans thwarted, she took the noble end of a fiery death in dining room light fixture.

I can’t end this on a Viking Bee Funeral.  So, I end this post with a video of Neil demonstrating his mad bee flicking technique.  He was taking frames from our honey supers and flicking all the bees off to go back into their hives.  He’s quite good at it:

There you have it.  Neil Gaiman, talented bee flicker.

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We did some work out at the hives today.  Kitty came along and got a photo of me petting one of our bees.

This bee was from our oh so mellow Lebowski Hive.  Not all were so mellow.  I got stung on the ankle (and it’s true, the stings hurt less over time).  Poor Hans got stung 5-6 times on the ankle.

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Look at all the little white bee necks!  Cute!  I love it when you see bees craning their heads.

Lorraine and I checked the hives on Wednesday and most is going very well.  The yellow Hannah hive and the green Wendy hive are still working their honey supers.  We removed the bell jar from the Wendy hive, the bees weren’t really building in it and we also noticed that the honey right cells right below the bell jar was not capped.  Groundskeeper Hans check the hives last weekend and thought he saw condensation inside the jar too.  I decided to remove it, fearing that the recent heat and humidity was affecting the hive.

The red Juliet hive appears to have swarmed.  It was quieter in the front and there did not seem to be as many workers in the hive.  We took out a frame and found some in progress queen cells…and now I just noticed an egg in that empty cell on the left, maybe she hasn’t swarmed yet?  This hive is behaving very much like our very first Kitty hive.  I remember Kitty was a little behind and still had some space in her hive, but still went into swarm mode.  The red Juliet hive had plenty of room, I added a third brood box early and both the middle and top boxes were not completely filled and this hive apparently still feels crowded and swarming is a good idea.  I’m concerned about this hive filling out her box enough for winter, but not so much about the swarm.

If she wants to swarm, I’m not going to stop her.  We have set up an empty hive in our bee yard in the hopes that a swarm will move in, but that’s has far as I want to go.  Bees do what they want to do sometimes.

After the bee inspection, I went around to take photos.  I was just about to leave when I thought that it’s been kind of humid, I should check the oak for sulphur shelf. Alas, no sulphur shelf and I thought, “I should check the other oak for Hen of the Woods, but it seems early.”  I almost turned around to leave but thought that I walked that far, I might as well check.

Boy, am I glad I did!  I found Hen of the Woods!  A whole month earlier than I normally do thanks to our very cool summer weather–this is my FAVORITE edible mushroom.  I ran back to the house grabbed Lorraine and Groundskeeper Hans to show them.  As I was harvesting the tasty edible fungus, I marveled at how we almost missed it and found some start up of more Hen of the Woods next to this large clump, so hopefully more will come.  This was a bit older than what I normally harvest, but I was able to get all the bugs out before I froze it.

This wood frog hopped out of the clump as I cut off the brackets.  I’m sure it was after all the bugs crawling around it.  I left some behind in the hopes that spores would grow more fungus and so the frog could have some bugs since I disturbed his bug buffet.

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Lorraine and I headed out to the county fair to get photos of our award winning honey. On the right is our very light extracted honey and our comb honey. Some people came by and took a look our stuff, we puffed up bigger than prairie chickens on a lek–just overwhelmed with pride in our girls.

And to show you what a swanky affair the county fair can be, check out the entertainment: The Hypno Cowboy…it reads on his flyer that he is certified…where does one go to be certified as a hypno cowboy?

A week ago, Mr. Neil added a bell jar to one of our hives.  The idea is based on this website, to get the bees to make some cool looking comb inside the glass jar.  At first he just put in the jar, but then after looking at the photos, decided to add some strips of foundation to get the bees started.  We covered with an empty brood box to shade and keep it dark (bees like it in the dark). Lorraine and I checked it over the weekend and discovered that things are running a bit amok in the bell jar.  Part of it is that the wax foundation has melted off in a few places.

Some of the strips were on the ground and the bees appeared to be drawing out comb there…I’m not sure how this is going to work having comb all over the ceiling.

One of the very cool things about the bell jar is that it gives you a chance to see the underside of the bees–look at that little bee tummy in all its furry glory–I just want to tickle it!  It was challenging to get photos, the girls were running around very fast and the bell jar’s imperfections made it hard to focus.

As they were running around, I noticed quite a few of the girls were carrying wax in their mandibles.  Note the bee in the lower right corner–she’s blurry, but she definitely has wax in her mouth–a view of active comb construction that I’ve never seen before.  Since they were crawling on the glass, I thought, “Cool, they’re drawing out comb on the sides anyway.  Then I noticed a bee running around with a “circle” of wax.

As a matter of fact, it was the perfect shape to match that hole in the foundation above.  I began to suspect that the bees may not have been drawing out comb on the foundation left on the sides of the bell jar, but were taking that wax away and reallocating it inside the hive.  Bees produce wax from glands on their body, down along the segments on the lower part of their body.  They secret and work it with the mandibles and add it for making comb.

As I watched the bees working the the wax with their mandibles, I was trying to determine if they were removing wax or adding it in…not an easy feat with hundreds of bees running around in various directions in a bell jar.  As I watched, I noticed that I could hear a sound coming from the bell jar…a crackly kind of sound…a sound like mandibles snapping on wax.  I tried to get a video of the sound.  If you use headphones listening to the video below, you can kind of hear the sound I’m talking about.  At about 29 seconds, there’s a bee on the right side of the foundation, removing a piece of the wax foundation, she’ll walk around to the other side and you will see her with the wax bit in her mouth.  At a 1:04, you’ll see series of bees crawling on the glass in the right side with pieces of wax in their mandibles too.  Here it is:

So, I’m not sure what’s going to happen with the bell jar bees.  I’m not too worried, we have hives producing honey for jars and comb honey, and hives working to fill their stores for winter and mostly happy bees.  We’ll see what happens over the next month.

Whatever happens, it’s been an incredible view of watching them work.

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I am just so giddy!  Our bees won the county fair for the second year in a row!  And this time, we took both the honey ribbons–one for extracted honey and the other for cut comb honey.  It’s official, our cured bee vomit is the best bee vomit!

It’s the oddest sensation, the bees essentially did the work, we just took it out of the hive and presented it to the fair officials and they judged it to be what we already suspected–super tasty.  However, I still feel a deep satisfaction in it.  And no, we are not the only entrants in the county fair–there were others and the local bee club does have a booth at the fair, we are certainly not the only beekeepers in the area.

Beekeeping is the coolest thing and I love that I do it, I love watching my bees. I don’t know what the secret to our hive flavor is. I’ve never been a fan of honey.  When we started our beekeeping operation and Mr. Neil said that we would split the honey down the middle, I didn’t care.  I was strictly interested in beekeeping from a natural history point of view.  Honey had always had an odd after taste that I never cared for.  I did like Really Raw Honey brand, that was the first time I found honey a pleasure to eat.  We were warned that in our beekeeping class that our honey that our own bees produce would be the best tasting honey ever and we would be spoiled for any other kind.

I’ve always kept that in the back of my head. Even the first time when we ate honey from our hives and the four of us on our bee team literally devoured a frame in twenty minutes.  I had never tasted anything like it.  The honey was warm from the summer sun, the wax was fresh and chewy.  The honey was light in flavor, that tasted the way the local wildflower smelled, with just a hint of a peppery bite in the finish.  I thought it was the best, but still in the back of my mind, I thought it was because they were our bees. Even if friends told me it was the best honey ever, I was still suspicious.  Who well tell a beekeeper that their bees make “ok honey” or just “edible honey” or even “sucky honey?” No one is going to say that (at the very least to be polite but also because the beekeeper could send bees to sting them). I was cautiously optimistic about how great our honey is.

So, for a lark we entered a jar in the county fair last year and we won.

I was shocked–was our honey really that good?  Was it just a fluke, were we just new entrants and judges thought, “Oh, here’s somebody new, let’s give it to them!”  We entered again this year and I tried to keep my hopes low–we might not win this year, our honey tastes a bit different with a hint of mint, maybe someone has an all basswood honey that would blow the judges out of the water, or maybe someone else has a turn to win this year–and our extracted honey won again!  We must have talented bees with a knack for producing great honey.

We also thought we would enter in our comb honey, but Lorraine noticed that the entry rules read, “cut comb honey” and worried that our use of Ross Rounds may not count.  Cut comb honey comes from the type of supers where you literally cut the wax comb into squares and put them in either plastic boxes or in a jar with more honey–you can eat the wax along with they honey.  Ross Rounds are the best way that I have found to do comb honey.  There are plastic circles that fit into the frames of the Ross Round.  The bees build out the foundation inside the white circle.  When they cap over the honey, you remove the frames, easily pop out the white circle and put a lid on either side–badda bing, badda boom, you’re done.  There’s no cutting (apart from trimming away excess frame foundation).  Here is a blog entry on how to extract you comb from Ross Rounds.  The holders and lids make for a great presentation, especially if you found on where every single cell is capped.  But I wondered if that would be considered cheating–you essentially are putting the container for holding the comb in the hive for the bees to build in.  I told Lorraine that we should be rebels and to enter it anyway…and we won!

I find comb honey far easier to harvest and I enjoy it the most–I love chewing the wax. It’s also the more valuable honey–you tend to pay more for it. However, when I give comb honey to friends, many are kind of wierded out about the wax.  I found out through a friend on Facebook that Mr. Neil had gifted him some comb honey and he confessed he hadn’t eaten it because he wasn’t too keen to eat wax.  So we have extracted honey.

Perhaps Lorraine’s method of extracting our honey helps with the flavor?  We have a big fancy extractor, but she prefers to strain our honey through cheesecloth. We do not heat our honey (some beekeepers do to make it stay in a liquid state for a longer period of time–which also affects the flavor of the honey and causes that weird after taste ). If you do not heat your honey, it can “granulate” over time, which is fine, it’s just a tad thicker.  It’s safe and works fine in tea, but some people think granulated honey is inferior and will not buy it, that’s why many commercial honeys are heated, so it will stay liquid and consumers will purchase it. If you wish to turn granulated honey into liquid honey, just put the jar in warm water for a few minutes.

We are all now warming in the afterglow of our second consecutive win and our clean sweep of all the honey awards at the county fair.  I’ll try to head out this weekend to get photos.

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I saw this red-tailed perched on the exit ramp on my way out to the bees on Sunday. The fuzz is very serious in their enforcement of no parking on the exit ramp!

I tell you, the type of summer we are having with our hives, is the type of summer I would wish for any new beekeeper.  Well, apart from the fact that the people we ordered our Russian bees from have taken the money and not delivered the bees…and seem to feel that when we say we would rather have the money back, that we mean we want to be on a list for Russian bees from them next year.  I’m not too keen to order any bees from Long Creek Apiaries again.  They apparently had a bad spring, which is understandable, but rather than telling us, “Hey, we shouldn’t have taken your order, we can’t deliver those bees, we apologize, would you be willing to carry your order over to next year,” they didn’t answer the phone, or if they did they would say, “uh next week, for sure,” or at one point, just hung up on us. I found out through Twitter that if you went to their website, they had a message reading, “If you ordered bees from us and didn’t get them yet, you won’t be getting them this year. We apologize.”

I would have been more sympathetic had they told us that during one of our many calls and I’m curious to see if we will get a refund.

But apart from that, our four little Minnesota Hygienic Italian beehives are going very well and are just so friendly when we visit. Even when they do get irritated with us and we can hear their buzzing become impatient, it’s nothing like the anger felt at the now defunct Kitty Hive.

They are going propolis crazy (propolis is bee duct tape). See the yellowish stalagmites? That’s propolis that the girls had used to seal the roof of the hive to the walls.  It smells wonderful, but once it gets on your hands, it’s next to impossible to get off. I have washed my hands several times, and now almost 48 hours later, I can still see some propolis on my hand.

We did a wee bit of harvesting to prepare an entry for the county fair.  Last year, our extracted honey got the blue ribbon–we are defending champions.  Here is a look at a full frame of honey from one our supers. This is from the former stoner hive, Hannah. She’s already working on filling a second honey super.  When the cells are capped, that is when we know the bees have converted the flower nectar into true honey and it’s ready for harvest.  When bees bring nectar to the hive, it is about 60% water. The bees fan it with their wings to evaporate some of the moisture until it is about 18 -19% water and then they cap it.  At this point, it has a very long shelf last and could literally for centuries. You can harvest honey before it’s capped, but it is more likely to ferment over time.

We also thought we would try our hand at entering some comb honey this year. Our green Wendy hive is a natural at producing comb honey. And again, I say to all who have been told that first year bee colonies will not do comb honey, this is the third year we have done it successfully with new hives. It’s usually the girls who have a knack for making feral comb, they seem to be the ones who like to try something funky and will give Ross Round honey supers a go.  We also smear some honey on top of the new super and wedge in a small piece of comb on the top of the super to encourage them to build up.  We removed one frame of our rounds to enter one of the rounds in the fair. Wendy was doing so well and had completely filled up one comb honey super that we added a second and she’s already drawing out comb–go girls, go!

Mr. Neil is conducting an experiment on our hives–the bell jar (and a little more about it here).  We’re hoping to get some funky comb built inside the glass jar. We did not want to disturb our honey makers (Hannah and Wendy) and our little purple Yvaine hive is doing well, but really needs to focus on getting her honey stores together for winter, we don’t want to bother them with the bell jar. The red Juliet hive is about full and had one honey super, so we thought we would try there (the bell jar is in the box with the bat symbol on it).  After a few days there had been no activity in the bell jar.  We decided that since Wendy is all for making strange comb, we would move the bell jar on top of her comb honey supers and see if Juliet will make some proper comb.

I forgot that we had put in a honey super in the Juliet brood box.  I do that so the girls will start to build on it, then I add to the honey super.  The smell of fresh comb seems to draw the bees up in the super so they will fill it up.  They did do some comb on it, but really went to town adding drone cells (boy bees) to the bottom of the frame.  We scraped it off and put the frame back in the super.  Some of the drone larvae fell in the hive and it was amazing to watch a worker swiftly scoop him up, presumably to try and fit him a cell else where.

So, here we are with our frame of comb honey and our frame to extract into a jar.  Lorraine will take it to the judges today for judging.  Will our girls win again?  We started the extraction process in the kitchen, the comb didn’t take much time to put together, just pop it out of the frames and put some lids on it…we did have one challenge, you want the comb honey to be filled and completely capped and for some reason, our girls built a tunnel for traveling through most of the rounds, but we found at least one perfect one for judging.

Mr. Neil held the frame for the extracted honey over a bucket with cheese cloth, while Lorraine scraped away the wax and honey. He received an important phone call, so I gave him the phone and took his place holding the frame. When Lorraine finished, we saw a bit of honey residue still on the frame and like our first year with a frame full of honey, began licking it…let me tell you, Hell hath no fury like Mr. Neil missing out on a hive,s first honey!  He yelled at us to stop and save some for him.  We paused, waited for him to leave the room and gave the frame a few more licks.

The honey tastes like mint.

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