1st Round of Extractions
August 2nd – Honey Extraction Like I said, I’m trying things different this year so I wasn’t sure what to expect for honey. But, this is the first year ever I extracted honey the first of August. Usually don’t pull honey supers until September or even October. That way they catch the last honey/nectar flow of the year. But I may extract again in the fall. I don’t expect much from this harvest. I’m guessing 20 pounds or so. But hey, that is $200 for winter hive wrap, mite treatment, and feed! I am hoping for a total of about 60 Pounds this year. A little less than last year, but it will all work out.
UPDATE – 7-26-25
Good Things Coming! Although it’s still a touch-and-go struggle with the bees since the devastating winter of 2021-2022 and some losses that have occurred since, we aren’t giving up on the bees! We can’t give up on the bees! With that said, we are down to three (3) active hives for the 2025 summer season (so far). That is a far cry from the 10 we started with. However, as you know, we’ve relocated everything back to our property to manage them better and more often. The Vassalboro location was great, and Ethan did awesome caring for them all the times I couldn’t get there. But having them here, they are outside our window, and if they start to swarm, we are right on top of it. When it’s inspection time, they are right outside our door! I believe I mentioned in another post that we are also working on 1-Deep Management rather than 2. This will give us a lot more honey and be better for keeping control of the colony’s size. It also makes inspection a lot easier as well as cutting the cost of any natural treatments in half! Saving money is a good thing. Another part of the positive changes is we have purchased a vlogging camcorder (a cheap one) so we can start videotaping hive inspections and goings-on at the apiary. With these films it will help build a presentation to schools so the children can familiarize themselves with the life and times of honeybees. So, once we figure out the camera, you can start expecting some great videos of our hives, inspections, harvests, extraction and bottling of our honey. I hope you will enjoy an up-close and personal view of the bees and their activities. As you can see in the photo on the right, our hives are home but in a new location. We’ve decided not to cut the lawn until late fall on this side so the bees can enjoy the wildflowers and an all-natural-looking area. So far, it seems the bees are doing well in this location. Although we only have 3 active hives right now, our 3rd hive is all made up of deep supers. We can break them down and make splits, maybe this year, and give us 1 to 2 more hives. We have extra frames of honey from last year that we never extracted in case we needed them to feed back to the bees. It turns out, these extra frames of honey will be a considerable help in creating a split and the bees having enough honey to make it through the upcoming winter. So, when we do our inspection this week, I’ll see if any of the hives, especially the one made up of 3 deeps, is ready to split and create one or two more hives this year. If we can get 2 more, that puts us halfway to getting where we were to begin with 3 years ago. You can see (in the picture) that we have extra hives available. (NOTE: This picture was taken from our living room window.)
NEWS – What’s Happening and Volunteer Info
Bees working capping honey! We are also trying “Single Brood Management,” where we will run a single deep rather than a double deep. The bees rarely eat all the honey anyway. So, this gives us another 40 to 50 lbs. of honey and a much easier job for inspections and management. It’s very different and a learning experience, so fingers crossed. It is becoming popular practice to use single deeps. So, with that said, we have already been able to harvest 9 frames of honey so far, and several more are waiting to be harvested. Then we will extract it and bottle it for sale. We hope to be getting the rest of the early honey this week. And then we won’t extract honey again until fall. After this season is over, I will have to closely inspect my queen excluders after I remove them. In one of my hives, it seems the spaces must be bent somewhere, allowing the queen through, and she lays eggs in the honey supers. Of course, we don’t extract that honey until the eggs hatch out and it’s backfilled with honey. Not a BIG deal; it just takes more time before being able to extract the frames she laid in. INTERESTED IN VOLUNTEERING/LEARNING? We Have Some New Bee Suits! As for those interested in learning beekeeping as a volunteer a few hours a month, we finally received 2 brand new bee suits that are XL and XXL and retrieved our other extra suit from Vassalboro. So, we have extra suits if any of them fit you and you would like to see if you like working with bees! Interested in Volunteering? Please e-mail Bob@SavingtheHoneybees.net.
Behind Schedule
The weather has been awful, with rain much of the time. That is a setback for the hives because the bees can get out and forage, and with all the bees in the hive and in a lame mood, it is a bad time to check the hives. So, I’m about 3 weeks behind in my inspections. I hope to be doing inspections tomorrow. With a little luck, I’ll set my camera up on the tripod and try to get dsome new pictures from this year’s inspections. In the meantime, I found a few pics from an inspection at one of our locations last year. Pics came out well! Enjoy!