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| The "Girls" Working Hard for the Honey |
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| "Mini Me" and Me |
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| So Yummy! |
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| Our Taste-Tester |
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| Husband Checking Hive 3 |
We have been out of town quite a bit since the last time I posted. On May 17, my husband added honey supers to Hives 1, 3, and 4. Hive 2 is my weakest hive, so I added a couple of quart jars of sugar water + Honey B Healthy before we left to go out of town.
When we returned home around June 10, we checked the hives and the bees were beginning to build comb and make honey in Hives 1, 3, and 4, so we added a honey super to Hive 2.
We added food-grade foundation for cut comb to 10 of our frames and divided them between the 4 hives. Today, my husband checked Hive 3's honey super and two cut comb frames had capped honey. Well, actually one had capped honey and one had capped honey and capped brood. We removed our excluders from all of our hives prior to going out of town in May. It seemed like the excluders were hindering the honey production and we realized that removing them would open up the possibility of brood getting in the honey super. Using excluders seems to be a personal preference among beekeepers. My opinion is that it is worth taking the risk of giving up a few frames of honey to brood rather than working the bees to death with trying to move up and down through the excluder. We tried plastic and metal and both types were a hindrance in my opinion.
It was an exciting day as we harvested the one frame of cut comb! Our Granddaughter E loves honey and eats it everyday, so she was our "taste tester". E approved, so that passes the test at our house.
We are hopeful that the bees will stay healthy and continue to produce. We added an additional honey super to Hive 3 today. And Husband is working to get supers and frames assembled for Hives 1 and 4. We plan to add those this upcoming week.
What a blessing it is to be a beekeeper!
