My wife has now advanced in her rehab enough to drive one block to take care of some business for our son, then drive one block back to the house. She told me to go ahead on and take care of my bees.  Thank you, Dearest.

I had a young beekeeper to volunteer to help my pull honey. He has the strength and a good back so naturally I said, “Meet me at my house at 6:00 in the morning.

I had good hopes of pulling at least 10 supers from 12 hives today. Boy was I ever wrong. The first apiary had two strong colonies when I saw them one month ago. Well, let me tell you that I was very disappointed to fine one colony had been slimmed with Small Hive Beetle larva poop. The other one had brood in the honey super, so we just pulled a frame of honey up into the new super, scored the caps to spill honey down to the bees, and placed it on top of the brooded honey super. Letting the honey run down to the bees lets them know there is another level to their hive.

The next apiary had four colonies. Three had brood in the honey supers. Had to place another super with scored honey frame (using hive tool, cut into caps to let honey drip down so the bee will know that there is more room upstairs) on those. The other one was still cross combed. Last Winter, I had put the cross combed super on the bottom and a honey super on the top.  About five months ago, I found brood in the honey super and I proceeded to put the honey super on the bottom and a deep super on the top so the bees could move up. I added a queen excluder to the top of the brood box and placed the cross combed super above that. Today, we found the bees had skipped the brood box and went into the cross comb again. I think that the queen never got out of that super. Anyway, the other three didn’t have capped honey, they had brood in the honey super. Rats! I struck out again. Put empty supers on those.

Apiary number 3 had one colony. Capped honey! Wonderful. Get the smoker quick! OH NO! It started to rain, HARD! We closed up the hive and jumped into the truck and decided that we were through for the day. Bombed out again. Oh well, that is the life of a beekeeper.

We started home. About 25 miles down the road, we hit sunshine. Hey! Maybe we can go to the 4th apiary. When we got there, we were able to pull one super of capped honey. Great! Get the Bee Blower. This is a leaf blower that I use to blow the bees out of the super and from between the frames. I don’t have any trees, so I just renamed it the Bee Blower.

Went to the next apiary and it had one colony and I found that 2 of my five nucs had survived. We added a nuc deep to each and said “Multiply girls”. The colony in the full hive was weak when I left it a month ago. It had a deep brood box and two supers of babies. I have to go back and probably divide it into three colonies. That will be later. No honey, but I am not mad.

The final apiary had four colonies and one of those was slimmed. Now I have three colonies, but I got five supers of capped honey. I am very happy. On the way home, we decided to visit my helper’s apiary. He had a bear visit him and out of the six  colonies, only one was torn into and he lost some honey.

We went through all of his hives and found two that didn’t have queens. We pulled two frames of brood from one of the other hives and placed one in each of the queenless colonies and are hoping the bees will make queen cells. If not, then he will have to purchase a couple of queens real soon. If not able to do so, then he will have to combine those 2 colonies with two queenright ones. That way he will not lose his bees.

We unloaded the honey from my hives into the honey house —-now I will continue the extraction in the next post. Good night.