It has been a warm Dec & 1st 1/2 of Jan. Today we got up to 50 degrees. As the sun heats the front of the hive the bees come out. Have placed some water infront of the hive and some honey for the them to eat.

Presidential Bee's

During my friends to trip to Washington DC he was able to capture a photo of a bee hive on the White-house south lawn.

My stand for the bee hive it not that nice.  Also note they do not use any deep hive body's.  I think I am going to go that route for any new hives.

The different flower the bees visit results in different color honey.  On the right is from Summer/Fall 2010.  Middle was Spring/Summer 2011 and left is Fall 2011.  It is cool with the Honey come out as dark as used motor oil.

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.