I thought that by now I would have been in the bee yards checking to see what I needed to do for or to the bees. Alas! I have been entertaining visitors, all family, for the last two months, going to the bee college, more family visiting, getting ready for some friends from W. Virginia, and collecting swarms from tree limbs, and out of a building to be demolished.

The swarms were from two of my hives. I made a split from one hive and it swarmed three times since. Only one was a true swarm and I think that the other two were mating swarms. However, the last two have made good nucs. The parent colony is still strong and has a queen. Go figure! I think that I need to use that queen as a breeder queen. It seems to be a survivor and is a strong colony. That will be a separate post since I, as of this time, have not attempted to make queens.

I regret that I did not have my camera with me when I removed the colony from the building. It was a beautiful 10 comb hive about two feet by three feet in size. I got a five gallon bucket of wax comb and a five gallon bucket of combed honey. Most of the comb was dark brown to nearly black. I can only extract the honey and melt the wax as I would not eat the dark wax and will not sell it as comb honey.

I did get two honey customers during the extraction and there were 5-8 people taking pictures with cameras and cell phone cameras. I had an opportunity to talk bees and honey to the spectators and possibly will be invited to a school to give a demonstration.

Now I have to build a solar wax melter to melt all that wax as the one I did have has expired and I had to tear it down and throw the rotted wood away. I also need to try my hand at building a wax press to extract the honey comb. If I succeed, I will write about it.

By now you have started a good honey flow for Wildflower honey. It will be just a few weeks and the Palmetto and Gallberry will be blooming and you can get some specialty honey. The Tupelo will be blooming at the same time for those of you that have a Tupelo site in the Apalachicola swamp area. Now is not the time to sit back and relax. Just keep plugging along and you will be able to rest during the Summer time. Until next time, keep on enjoying your bees.