"bee bunch" extraction day

it was an amazing day. exhausting for all, but very rewarding. i did not get to extract with the "bunch" because i felt like my supers were not quite capped off enough and i did not want to risk having that liquid gold go to waste and ferment on me! my bees needed about another week to 10 days to be ready for robbing.

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laney had his garage set up as a temporary "honey house". everyone brought over their full supers that morning or the night before and tried to "cleverly" hide them from laney's bees under a tarp on the driveway, but we were only fooling ourselves! those bees could smell that honey and were determined not to let anyone with less than 6 legs get at it before they did!

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inside the garage were several de-capping stations. these were basically portable utility sinks. each one had been retrofitted with a rack across the top to hold de-capped frames waiting for extraction.

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a note about "cappings"... the bees store nectar in the comb, and fan it with their wings to help evaporate the moisture. they know when the nectar reaches that magical conversion point...a moisture content of less than 18%. that's when nectar is no longer nectar, but honey! the next step for the bees is to "cap off" the cells with wax to store the honey for future use, kind of like we can green beans in the summer.

so, "de-capping" is the process of opening the cells by slicing off the wax caps so that the honey can then be extracted.

the cappings drop down into the utility sink and drain through a filter into a bucket waiting underneath the sink.

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the cappings are saved and used in a variety of ways... they can be rendered (that's a story for another day) and used to build up foundation on frames for use in the spring, made into soaps and lotions, they can even be melted and eaten on toast (Gary's favorite)!

lots of uses for beeswax, but i chose to borrow an idea from laney and gary... selling unfiltered honey w/ the cappings in the jar. lots of people ask for comb, and just as many are looking for local honey to help with allergies, so i borrowed their idea and combined my unfiltered honey (full of pollen and whatever else the bees brought into the hive) with the cappings and offered it for sale. great response. it's also a good way for me to easily distinguish between the spring flow honey and the summer flow.

they really had this whole day down to a system. everyone worked together, but on only one beekeeper's supers at a time. so after de-capping, the frames were loaded into one of two extractors. one was a three-frame extractor, manually operated, and secured to the stairway banister.

the other was a nine frame motorized rig mounted on a sturdy table and somehow chained to the floor. andy and cliff were both enamored with the motorized contraption...

each extractor worked by spinning the frames and slinging the honey out of the comb, which then drained out the bottom through a screen and into a 3 or 5 gallon bucket.

then came clean up! had to gather and store all the cappings in separate buckets, wash everything down, stack the supers and buckets, make room for the next beekeepers' bounty, and start all over again!

i think the final count was around 100 gallons at the end of the day. like i said, exhausting, but rewarding.

busy bees...

well life has been hectic lately, and i've been praying that God would look out for my girls until i could be a more responsible beekeeper.  it seems that every time i had a small window of opportunity to work them, some crisis would arise and all spare time instantly evaporated.

however, it seems God took pity on me, and with good advice, healthy bees and good weather, everything worked out just fine, in spite of my hectic schedule and my many mistakes.

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i've noticed the bees "bearding" a lot lately.  wasn't sure if it was due to hot weather or overcrowding.  

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i had some work to do before i actually got in the hives and worked the bees.  each hive would need a new super, and each super would need new foundation in each of the 10 frames it would hold.  wax tends to get dark, even black, after the bees have used it for a while.  

this is definitely not my favorite part of beekeeping.  i'm not real good with a hammer and a nail.  but, after a few mistakes i finally got it down to a system.

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i was completely caught by surprise when i did finally get in the hives.  i expected to check them all and add a super to each.  but each hive was completely "honey-bound" - no room for the bees to do anything because each frame was full of honey and capped off as well.  i had to rob immediately to avoid swarming.

unfortunately, i hadn't discussed this with laney ahead of time because i certainly hadn't expected to find what i did.  so i went with what i had been told to do last year and i made some big mistakes! 

i started with polyxena christina's hive.   the bees had run out of room and were building comb in between the supers. ( i later found out that this is called "bridge comb".) they were stuck together and heavy.  i made a big mess trying to break them apart.  then i totally stressed the bees out by taking the whole super off and working it from there.  apparently, the smell of the honey from the comb i ripped open to remove the super added to the alarm.  kevin and andy both got stung even though they were standing a ways off in the driveway (i didn't miss this opportunity to point out to andy that perhaps they liked me better than him).  i emptied 2 supers and put the new super with the fresh foundation on then left them alone.

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got into agnes' hive next.  this time i tried removing one frame at a time while leaving the super on.  this worked much better.  not near as much stress for the bees. emptied 3 supers except for a few frames and added the new super with the fresh foundation.

same with esther's hive.  i left a few frames of honey in both agnes' and eshter's hive.  left a whole super in polyxena christina's.  set the empty supers back on top of the hives, put the lids on and left them alone for the evening.

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next morning at 7am, kevin, michaelann and kate showed up to help with extraction.  now this is only the third time we have done this, and we definitely have not refined the process to an art yet, but we're getting better.  this was the first time to try out a new-to-me 2 frame extractor.  i bought it already rigged to a milk crate, but one crate wasn't high enough to let the honey drain into a 5 gallon bucket, so we quickly improvised and were pretty successful with our attempt. 

it's a fairly simple, but labor-intensive process.  as the hives are robbed, i put the full frames in totes with lids to keep the bees away.  extracting HAS to be done inside.  the frames are de-capped, either with an electric de-capping knife (which i believe i will invest in sometime in the future!) or with a capping scratcher, which is what i have.  then the frames are put - 2 at a time - into the extractor.  a manual crank on top spins the honey out of the frames.  then we let it spin  to a stop, reverse the frames so that the spun side is now facing the center of the extractor, and spin again to extract the outer side.  the honey drains out the bottom into a filtering screen set on top of a 5 gallon bucket.

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three and a half hours and about 18 gallons of honey later, we were kind of wrapping it up so i headed back out to the hives with all those wet frames.  i wanted to get them back on asap.  i knew the bees would be foraging again as soon as the sun came up and would need the frames back quickly.

sure enough, in just 18 hours they had already started to build comb on the side walls of the empty supers.  they had also pulled out a fair amount of comb on the new foundation and didn't seem to want to be bothered.  i could tell it was going to take some convincing to get them off of that new comb.  decided it might not be a wise battle to fight.  my original plan was to get in the hives, REMOVE the new foundation (after emailing laney i realized that with brand new foundation in there, the bees would have to spent their time and energy pulling out foundation and building cells and i'd rather have them making honey) REPLACE it with a super full of wet comb and leave them be(e).  

well, there were SO many bees that i just didnt think one shallow super would give them enough room.  they were bearding all over the outside and inside of each hive.  so, even though i like the idea of only adding one super at a time and having them fill it to half full before adding another, i decided the best thing to do would be to add the wet super on top of the super with the new foundation, giving them 2 to work in.

i filled the rest of the empty supers with the wet frames and set them out on tables near the hives for the bees to clean up.  apparently they will not store in them if they are off the hive.

i'll let the bees clean them up for a couple of days, then smoke them off and store the supers with moth crystals until i am ready to use them again.  

polyxena christina's hive remembered me and by all signs had not forgiven me yet.  they were irritated as soon as i got in there, and that is unusual for them.  they are basically VEY mild mannered most of the time.  i had better luck with agnes and esther...

next step is to gather more information at the next "bee bunch" meeting...

on our way

well, we are on our way.  checked the bees today (day 14).  i have one super per  hive.  each super was about 90 per cent full of nectar, and the bees were starting to cap off at the tops of the frames.  had the other supers stored with moth crystals to keep wax moths and hive beetles out, so i unpacked 3 and set them out to freshen up before i put them on tomorrow.  

long live the queen(s)!!

turns out i DID kill the queen. all was not lost, however, thanks to Laney! he GRACIOUSLY gave me another queen. i went over to his house and helped him get into his hives, find her majesty, mark her, cage her and then brought her home. her cage is a little plastic sleeve with a tube packed with a paste made out of powdered sugar. there's enough food there to last her 2 or 3 days...long enough for the bees to get used to her pheromone and help her eat her way out. after i placed her cage in between a couple of frames, the bees immediately swarmed all over her! i'm not sure if they were glad to see her or trying to get rid of the "intruder"...

i checked on her on day 3. she was out of the cage and had been accepted by the other bees. i found her easily and REJOICED!

the boys decided to name the queens so we spent some time researching italian queens throughout history. wil tyler chose "Polyxena Christina" for his queen's name, andrew reed chose "Agnes", and we jointly decided on "Esther" for the third girl's name. Granted, Esther was hebrew, not italian, but she DID save her people.

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fed the bees for about a week or so. they are young hives with lots of brood, but not lots of foragers yet, so the sugar water gave them a little boost. i need to do a little more research on the life cycle and commit the numbers to memory...you know how my brain and numbers get along...

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had a good time with laney and one of his hives. his queen has such a pretty laying pattern. he jokes about having his bees well-trained. apparently he also tutors them in artistic arrangements as well. the darker crescent shaped area is capped brood. the areas in the corners of the frame hold nectar and pollen that the workers use to feed the brood. he is trying a new "nectar management system" that he has been reading about lately. still in the experimental stages, but i will let you know what his results are.

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it's so tempting to get in the hives whenever i t strikes my fancy, just to watch and see what they are doing...but i am "listening to advice and accepting instruction" with the hopes that "in the end i will become wise" - that is to say that i DON'T get in the hives whenever i feel like it. i'm trying to stick to a 10-15 day schedule.