Honey Sale

Today Aleena decided to sell the honey. From the stand in the front yard between 11 am and 5 pm, she sold 31.5 lbs of honey and 24 lip balms. She worked really hard all day long. It sure draws a larger crowd than a lemonaid stand does.

Marked Queen

My new queen bee came in via UPS. She is marked with a blue do so it will be easier to find her. Each year they mark queen with a different color so you can identify when she was born.

Blue is the color for 2011.

Solar Oven

I created a solar oven to melt bees wax. The wax is filtered through a cloth and then into a pan of water. It floats on the water and is easy to remove.

The melting point for bees wax is around 145 degrees. On a 87 degree day we were able to get the oven upto 178 degrees. So the wax melted very well and we now have filtered wax.

Capturing a Queen

Aleena & I went through our large hive yesterday looking for our queen.  The brood pattern did not look very strong, so she is not a strong queen.

After looking through all the hive body frames, all 27 of them, we found the queen on the last one.  The fact that she was on a frame that was not built out much shows she was not working as needed.

I placed a open jar over her.  Once she climbed on the jar, I slid the lid on and sealed it.

On Thur, I am expecting the delivery of my new queen from GA.