Today, I had a young beekeeper and her husband over to get ready to pull honey and extract. I was disappointed to say the least. I had visions of about 100 pounds of raw honey.

First we had to clean the extractor by piecing sections of pipe from the extractor out the door and to a five gallon bucket with a strainer to catch any wax we flushed out.

I had somehow left 4 frames in the extractor the last time I used it and had forgotten about it. We found that the wax moths didn’t want anything to do with the frames, but there were several spiders that did.

After wiping the webs out and washing the extractor with cold water to keep from melting the wax that was stuck on the basket and sides, we decided to let the extractor air dry while we checked the three hives in the back yard. I was already planning on boiling some water to sterilize the extractor when we moved the honey supers into the honey house.

As it was, when we checked the first hive, which was in the past, a pretty rambunctious colony, we found that the bees had probably replaced the queen that might have been missing the last time. This time they were really nice and docile. We didn’t find the queen, but we saw young larvae and lots of sealed brood. In fact, the queen had been laying in the honey super. We moved the deep super that we had put on the top of the hive down to the top of the deep brood box and forgot to bring up a frame of honey to encourage the bees to check out the new cavity. At the time I thought that the bees would find it anyway as they crossed the new deep on their way up to the honey super that had some brood in it. I will have to check it in a day or two before I make a judgment.

By the time we finished the first hive, lunch was being put on the table so we broke and ate. After lunch, my young protege, who is pregnant by the way, was not feeling so good so we just sat there and talked about the bees and how to super without using any foundation.

If you have some drawn comb then alternate comb and empty frame. The bees will pull the frame out and make a descent comb there.  As it was, I didn’t have any drawn comb and only had limited waxed plastic inserts. so I was planning to use foundation alternated with empty frames just to see if it would work. I will have to check the other two colonies before I try this as I may still have some honey to extract and that will give me some drawn comb to spread around to the colonies so I can get some more supers into the works.

My wife and I ended up going over to our friends’ house to look at their 3 hives to see what I could see and tell them if they were working the bees correctly. Here is what I found.

One colony had swarmed and was holding it’s own trying to rebuild it’s numbers. The second colony had been split and was still looking very strong. The third colony was the split moved to the other side of the yard and turned 180 degrees so the door was facing North. Actually with the trees and brush on the north side of the yard, there was a good wind block and the door could have stayed that way, but we still turned the hive 90 degrees and will leave it that was for a day or two so the bees can find the door again. Then they will turn the hive another 90 degrees so the door will face South so the sun can hit the door in the early morning and get the bees to working faster. They will have to work hard because most of the workers that was transported to the split have already gone back to the mother colony.

Time will tell. That is the neat thing about being a beekeeper, you can always experiment or not as you wish. This is one way to learn your bees and what they are capable of doing.

Summer is here so that means the bees are in their Fall. Just keeping them alive from here to August will be an accomplishment. If they are weak on food at that time, you need to feed them so they can have lots of babies going into our Fall which is their Winter.

More on that subject coming soon. Until then, keep you veil handy, your smoker lit, and you hive tool sharp.