Last fall, this spring

You may be wondering why I quit blogging last fall on September 29. By my reckoning, I was about a day pregnant; about 10 days later, it was confirmed that our baby bee was on her way into the world. That news took up a bit of my time and energy. Now that we're closer to D-Day (delivery day!), I want to pick up where I left off, at least where bees are concerned.

I did pull honey last fall from the two colonies--about 120 lbs total of a very dark, fast granulating kind. Some of the honey--about a third--was almost black in the cells, with a minty flavor. There is just enough of that to give an interesting bouquet to the crop, which is also a bit darker than the usual fall crop. My best guess is that the bees found some Japanese knotweed.

We set up our extracting station in the garage. We had done it in the basement before, but find the garage gives us more room to work. I have a fairly modest setup: I bought my first batch of equipment from a hobbyist's widow: a powered Ranger Radial extractor, bucket heater, and electric uncapping knife. The Ranger Radial holds six medium frames (or three deep frames tangentially). The uncapping knife has a screw that should allow us to control the temperature--we found it got a bit too hot at first. But it's easier just to use a rheostat. We later found that the bucket heater overheats, too (the plastic on one of the buckets started to melt!), so the rheostat came in handy for that, too. I also bought an uncapping tub at Betterbee, along with an uncapping fork, several plastic honey tanks with gates, and plastic sieves.

Once we had the rheostat and uncapping knife working as we liked, things went pretty smoothly. The extractor is on a stand, and the stand is bolted to a wooden platform, but, obviously, we don't bolt it to the floor, since it's a temporary set up (though I suppose we could rig something...). That means that we start the extraction at a low speed, and let the amount of honey in the frames equalize a bit before ramping it up, to keep the shaking and shimmying to a minimum. That's probably a good practice anyway, since you're less likely to blow out comb.

There are some improvements we're thinking of for next time: perhaps heat tape for the extractor, to keep it and the extracted honey warm and flowing quickly. We've been extracting right into buckets, without straining, but it would be better to strain (at least a coarse strain) during that first pass, just to make the process go more quickly. But even a warm garage doesn't keep the honey warm enough to strain as you go. We did that later, using the bucket heater and patience.

Ideally, we'd also warm the honey before extracting (though, again, a fall garage is fairly warm, probably 80F). We tried it once, using a light bulb and stacks of supers, and it didn't work all that well. The closest super over-warmed, and the more distant ones got no heat at all. Several people have suggested the unused freezer or refrigerator trick, but at the moment, my beekeeping supplies are taking up quite enough room, and I'm hoping for something smaller. I think we'll just end up building a box that I can stack supers in, and using that as insulation with a space heater--or something like that.

After last falls trials--losing a queen and all--I'm sorry to say that neither colony made it. It looks like the south colony, which was requeened, may have lost that queen (again!). They didn't starve (they had a full super of honey and a top feeder), but were gone by February, when there was a thaw. A few were heads down in cells, but most were just dead on the bottom board. There was some evidence of deformed wing virus, too. I'd hoped that requeening would help, but either the queen didn't "take" and they went into winter without one (or lost her soon after), or the virus got them.

The north hive simply got too far from their stores, too, and couldn't reach them. They had a full super and then some, too.

So now I have two supers of honey, but it may be adulterated with the syrup I fed in fall, so I'm saving it for the packages that will come soon. I'm ordering Buckfast bees from R. Weaver. I bought that Buckfast queen from them in the fall, and since she didn't make it, I still want to try some Buckfast bees and see how they do here.

There are other bees in the area, though. Some stopped by to rob out my empties. I let them have what was in the hive bodies (but I squirreled away the two full supers for my packages). They must have traveled a distance, though, since I don't see them taking water from our stream (my bees did last year), and I don't see bees on dandelions now. While my deadouts were the only source of food, they were willing to travel, but now, with other things blooming, my hardtack isn't as attractive. Cornell's Dyce Lab is only about 1.5 miles from here, so it's no surprise that there are other bees, if not beekeepers, within close flying distance.

I set up a couple of deeps in preparation for my colonies, but also as a hopeful enticement for any swarms that might be looking for deluxe accommodations. I doubt I'll be so lucky, but you never know!