After reviewing what I needed in the hives, I met my young beekeeper and his friend who had decided to tag along and see what the fuss was about bees. We met as I was eating breakfast and they had coffee. You don’t have to be a coffee drinker to be a beekeeper, but you will find that the majority are coffee or tea drinkers.

We went to the apiary that had the extra supers and with the queen excluders I brought with me, we started to go through some of the hives checking for brood in the deep super. Remember, I said that the first super on the top of the brood box belonged to the colony. We found brood in most of them. I only had 4 queen excluders which we used up 2 in the first apiary. Only 5 colonies in that yard.

The next had 9 hives and only 7 had a colony of bees. Lost two to hive beetle slime. That is when the beetle larvae is boring through the honey cells, eating, and defecating. That makes a slimy concoction in the honey and on the tops of the frames. It is shiny and wet looking. The honey is ruined and has to be washed out of the combs. After washing with hosed water, you can let the combs air dry and use again. The bees will clean the wax up and start using again.

I will have to go back and take more queen excluders the next time I am there. We also had one hive with the honey super on the bottom because at the beginning of spring, all the bees moved up into the honey super to feed. Bees very rarely move down, so I had reversed the brood box and super. Now that all the bees had moved up into the deep brood box, we changed it so they could start all over in the correct box and fill the super with honey while the queen was busy laying eggs in the bottom deep brood box.

I didn’t find any diseases and very little evidence of varroa mites. Now all I have to do is get some screened bottom boards made up and go back and exchange the bottom boards and put in the queen excluders and get ready to pull honey and extract.

The Gallberry is beginning to bloom here so I need to get some more supers ready to change out with the wildflower supers and get ready to work for the next 2 months and hopefully have a breather before I have to keep check on the food supplies during the dearth months.

From August to Sept is the time to get my feeders ready and order some pollen patties, and new queens if I can find them to try to make strong hives with young queens to go into the winter with.

The reason for the last statement is the heart of a later post. Get ready to start enjoying your honey to eat and to sale.