New Pics

So we got a new camera, so here's a few of the best pics so far.  We're both into macro photography but these were actually just done with some close up filters.  Enjoy!!

Honey!!! And an eye toward the future.

So two weekends ago, July 23rd to be exact, we harvested our first batch of honey.  Two medium supers came from N's hive and one from L's hive.  N's hive had one more super which was mostly capped, but we didn't want to risk it contaminating our batch so we left it on.  After all, we can get it in the fall right!  Only two supers, one from each hive, were 'extractable'.  The other was cut comb, which is really only for cut comb honey.

All things told we got about 70 lbs. or so of total honey. We just about filled a 5 gallon bucket with extracted honey.

The extraction went well, hopefully I'll put up a dedicated post for that process.

The bees should be able to start collecting more nectar and pollen in the middle of August.  July and the first bit of August are sort of a dry period for them.  Not much out to collect!

We plan on using honey proceeds to put back into bee equipment ... after all they do most of the work!

A quick update

We had some great inspections yesterday (July 16th).  We had guests for the inspection of L's hive.  She thrives on talking about the bees and the bees seemed to be pretty relaxed as well (which hasn't been the case the past few weeks).  She requeened (twice) and it seemes to have worked now.  Guess we'll see in another week or two how she's really doing.  Maybe I'll convince her to write a seperate post about her requeening.

My inspection went well too, which was a surprise since the bees haven't been in the best mood the past couple weeks.  In fact I got stung on Friday just doing some yard work.  We didn't use a lot of smoke which maybe helped.

We have about 4 boxes of honey which we hope to process next week.  We'll certainly post about our extraction experience when it's all said and done.

Inspection Updates

Here's a quick rundown of all of our inspections so far:

April 23rd - This was just a standard inspection.  A couple of pictures are below.

Both of our hives are still just one level at this point.  We still dutifully fill the feeders as needed.

April 30th - L put on the 2nd super (box) for her hive.  Mine were a little behind so they stayed with one super.  A few pictures are below.

May 7th - N's mom and dad were visiting.  Other than that it was a standard inspection.  It was fun to show off the ladies.  No pictures from this inspection (which will likely be a continuing trend).  After a few inspections the pictures start to look the same :)

May 14th - L's cousin and his girlfriend were visiting for this inspection.  L did the only inspection, I wanted my bees to try to catch up so I left them alone for a week.  Common wisdom says the bees lose some work time (~ a day potentially) with each inspection.

May 21st - A couple of friends from church were over.  As you can tell we are in full 'display' mode getting everyone possible to see the ladies.  We added a third super (all mediums) to both of our hives.

May 28th - L's mom, dad, aunt, and g-ma were visiting.  We split the inspections between morning and afternoon.  N's in the morning (with no one watching), and L's in the afternoon (with everyone watching).  N added a fourth super and took the feeder off.  They're on their own for food now.

May 30th - L added her fourth super today, they just weren't quite ready a couple days ago.  She is now feeder free too.

May 31st - Beekeeper meetup at a local pub.  Nothing like beer and bees, after all they are only 1/4 different.  We got some advice and got to say how well we thought our bees were doing.  Got some advice on using pine bedding (like for a gerbil) in the smoker.

June 4th - An inspection by ourselves ... what a novel idea.  Only N's hive though.  We checked the first (bottom) super fully and then spot checked the other three.  The bees seem happy with no swarm cells at all.  The pine bedding idea from the meet-up was the best!  The smoker stayed lit with cool white smoke the whole time.

More busy bees

So this still isn't the "full" post I've been promising about our inspections, but I had to put up some videos (with sound!) and pictures from Thursday (5-12-11).  The bees were really enjoying the nice hot day, it was about 83F I think.

Here's a picture:

And another picture:

Here's the first video:

And the second video:

That's the most action we've seen so far.  I'm sure later into summer we'll see more of that ... especially since we'll have more bees in total!

As busy as ... well ... you know

So this is a bit of a cop out, but I'm a bit tired for a full post.  Here's a couple videos from a nice warm afternoon (5-6-11).

Look how busy they are.

More on our inspections soon!

First Inspection Picture

I just realized we only have 1 picture from our first inspection.  I think this is because the inspection for L didn't go well, and my inspection was relatively brief.  Don't worry, tons of pictures for our next couple inspections.  Until then ... here's a happy L.