Thursday, July 24, 2008

Summer Half Done


Wild Summer Colors ...and Raspberries...
FLOWER SHOW ~ Part I:

Pears...and Nectarine...
Tomato...and Apples, some with bird damage already!The First Honey...This is from the stronger hive, of the two I started in April. I inspected today, and saw both eggs, and brood. My stronger hive has nearly 5 full frames of POLLEN! Is that too much? I took about two frames of honey off the large brood box, which was jam packed with honey when I worked it two weeks ago. Side note: they had, in the mean time, consumed or moved a portion of it. And had begun laying eggs in that box! This, even after I put a nearly empty super between the lower box, and the honey bound box. Go figure. Anyway, I had it in my head I was going to harvest some honey to open up that box, so I did. They are good little buzzers, and I hope they appreciate the extra room, and open honey cells. Yum!
I am using plastic foundation. There is many options in bee keeping and I am learning to regret some of those I ended up with. Regardless, for these frames, I used a crush and strain technique. I scraped the capped honey off the foundation (leaving a 1/2 " or so all around the edge, though I did shave this down to frame level) and I am straining it now. The color is light, and the flavor has a lemon edge to it. It is tasty and energizing. There was nearly 1/2 a frame (photo below) where they had packed in pollen below the honey. These girls love to get the pollen! I bottled all that, to consume as comb honey. It is a complete food compliments of the bees. It looks like we'll get about 10 pounds. The weaker hive is doing very well, and had a lot of brood and eggs. They'd drawn out both lower boxes about 80%, so I gave them a super...don't really expect them to do much with it, but I want them to have the room if they want it. Not much else to report...Smoke has cleared (yea!) Summer is half done, and that is something to consider. xxoo Jj

1 comment:

Kym said...

The Sunflower with the brownish petals at a diagonal is an amazing photo. It belongs hanging in a gallery or in someone's home.

I love it.