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.

High Winds

Last night we had a major storm with tornado like winds of 90 - 100 mile per hour winds (National Weather Service confirmed).  Our block will lose 4 -6 trees since the storm tore them apart.


The only damage to the bee hives was that the lids were blown off.  I am sure there was some rain got in to the hives. I do not know how much damage that caused for the hive, but there was some activity today.  Once we have had a could days of nice weather, I might go in to check them out.


What I find amazing is that a 6 foot tall hive did not get blown over by 80 mph winds.  It was all the propolis and weight of the honey that held it together.

Pollination

The bees do a great deal of pollination in the plants around our neighborhood. This results in better production of berries, fruits and vegetables and more flowers.

This year our strawberry crop is out of control. We usually pick a small bowl of strawberries a day, now we are picking a strainer full every day. That results in a lot of strawberries smothies just to keep up. We also had neighbors notice the improvement in the flowers in thier yards.

We we feel that we are reaping the benefits of the bees prior to getting the honey.

First Honey

I was able to take 4 frames of capped honey out of the super. I am just guessing but I expect each frame to hold 2-3 pounds of honey.

I am doing this for a couple reasons.

• To give the bees more space and make them happier
• To give have them start on new frames of honey and increase production.