Yesterday I extracted honey from the dead hive, and as I was doing that I got an email response to my question about whether or not it was safe to use that honey. So now I have a bucket of honey that I can't use for myself. Let's go back to the beginning...
I had emailed my local master beekeeper about the honey in the dead hive, but he did not respond immediately so I asked the YCBA Google Group. I got one response from the group and that response was that it was OK. So I rented the manual honey extractor from YCBA and started extracting honey. I then got the email from the master beekeeper that the honey should not be used for people if the bees were medicated with thymol, antibiotics or fumagilin. I used fumagilin last fall so he recommended feeding the honey back to the bees. Now I get to figure out the best way to do that from the bucket of honey that I now have.
The good part of this process is that I got more practice at extracting honey. I like this extractor better than the one I rented last fall. It is smaller and yet did 4 medium frames and is easier to clean. I extracted 15 frames and decided to split my hive and give the wet frames back to the bees to start them off better. The main hive is doing really well with brood and eggs so it seems like a good thing to do.
Friday, May 27, 2016
Saturday, May 21, 2016
Spring Check-Up
I finally got around to opening up my hives.
I had 2 hives going into the winter. One died off early in the winter. I don't know why. The second made it through and still had dry sugar on the inner cover.
The dead out had about 15 frames of honey. I found a small cluster of bees that were head first into the frame, but most of the bees were dead on the bottom board. There were some partial frames of honey and pollen. I put them into one box and left it in the same place so the bees in the other hive can clear it out. I put a couple of newer empty frames into my nuc box on the other side of the live hive.
I prepared the nuc box just in case the hive was getting ready to swarm. I will do an artificial swarm split if needed.
I opened up the hive right down to the bottom board and cleaned it off. There were some dead bees, but not as many as the other hive. Lots of cappings and bits of pollen, but nothing to indicate disease.
The bottom box had some honey and pollen and newly cleaned comb indicating the workers are preparing for the queen to move down into the bottom box. The middle box had some honey and brood, and I found the queen with her blue dot so I closed up the middle box and moved on. The top box had 3 frames of honey on one side and then 5 frames of brood and honey and pollen with 2 frames of honey on the other side. The queen appears to be doing well and getting ready to move into the bottom box. I saw almost all worker brood, a little drone brood, and some empty queen cups, but no signs of swarming. I have not fed the hive any syrup or Fumagilin-B so everything they have done has been on their own. The trees are flowering and so are the wild strawberries and dandelions so there is plenty of forage. The weather has been dry so they have been out a lot. I will decide on medications tomorrow.
I had 2 hives going into the winter. One died off early in the winter. I don't know why. The second made it through and still had dry sugar on the inner cover.
The dead out had about 15 frames of honey. I found a small cluster of bees that were head first into the frame, but most of the bees were dead on the bottom board. There were some partial frames of honey and pollen. I put them into one box and left it in the same place so the bees in the other hive can clear it out. I put a couple of newer empty frames into my nuc box on the other side of the live hive.
I prepared the nuc box just in case the hive was getting ready to swarm. I will do an artificial swarm split if needed.
I opened up the hive right down to the bottom board and cleaned it off. There were some dead bees, but not as many as the other hive. Lots of cappings and bits of pollen, but nothing to indicate disease.
The bottom box had some honey and pollen and newly cleaned comb indicating the workers are preparing for the queen to move down into the bottom box. The middle box had some honey and brood, and I found the queen with her blue dot so I closed up the middle box and moved on. The top box had 3 frames of honey on one side and then 5 frames of brood and honey and pollen with 2 frames of honey on the other side. The queen appears to be doing well and getting ready to move into the bottom box. I saw almost all worker brood, a little drone brood, and some empty queen cups, but no signs of swarming. I have not fed the hive any syrup or Fumagilin-B so everything they have done has been on their own. The trees are flowering and so are the wild strawberries and dandelions so there is plenty of forage. The weather has been dry so they have been out a lot. I will decide on medications tomorrow.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)