On Friday afternoon the clouds went away, the sun broke through and after checking the side observation window and seeing it 100% capped with wax (meaning the honey was ripe), I decided to fully harvest that end frame. I had seen it was fully capped during last inspection, but with the chaos that ensued with the last inspection, I waited for a week before I harvested. The bee’s had been through enough. Harvesting is important for bees. Without harvesting a…
On Saturday I planned my first big inspection since my Flow frames have been at bee capacity. So many things I wanted to check, but the main over riding thing was – do I have too many bees? I have wondered for a few weeks now if I am at capacity in my hive, and feel like the proverbial rabbit in headlights with not knowing what to do. What I have done so far is actually nothing. …
I wanted to write a quick update from my harvest post one week ago today. The following three days after the harvest were the hottest my state has recorded. In fact there was one day where the top 10 hottest places on the planet were all in New South Wales – the state where Katoomba is. The bees were bearding nearly non stop. The other thing that happened after I drained one fifth of the middle frame was…
I work from home on Friday’s. So this Friday I decided after much contemplation, research, panic, and inspection I decided to harvest my first honey from the Flow Hive and my bees. Essentially I am robbing the bees of their food. 🙁 There is a 3 day heat wave here, – getting up into late 30’s near 40. Insanely hot. My first concern is for my bees so I decided to trial a…
Oh my. Finally, almost a year to the day when I first received my nuc and set up my flow hive – I’ve done an inspection and there are frames of capped honey. (pictures below). Luscious white capped cells of honey. For so long I’ve been waiting to do an inspection and find capped honey. I was almost beginning to worry the poor girls where incapable, and worried about what they were going to feed on over…
Just like my beautiful Proust – who reminisced his way through an entire 6 volumes of In Search of lost Time – triggered by a taste from his childhood, I am hoping that the scent of a beehive will in future bring back these memories of my happy beekeeping early days. I only realised I could smell this aroma yesterday after closing up the hive from the inspection – and going back to check on the bees, the most intense gorgeous aroma could…
Today was around 21 degrees celsius and mostly sunny. It has been very hot just after Christmas getting above 30 degrees celsius and then cooler, misty, rainy for a few days. Today was however perfect so I did a follow up inspection to one a couple of weeks ago when I was concerned about the wax moth larvae I found. Thankfully I saw absolutely no evidence of anything this time. The inspection went well. I found the…
Last week I did an inspection. After putting the super on – I wanted to see if everything was ok. I’ve read that it’s not uncommon that a new beekeeper will not get honey in their first season. So patience is essential. Given it was January 2016 (southern hemisphere) when I received my nuc – I’m still not sure if I have done one complete season or just a kind of half season. I’m now into the second…
I had some old cast iron chairs from a New Zealand theatre – that I’ve had for 30 years. I’m guessing they are nearing over 100 years old. I bought them intact – but as i’ve left them outdoors for the past 10 years, they have slowly rotted to the point only the cast iron frames remain. The guilt associated with this rotting corpse of history in our hidden part of the garden was getting too much. So this…
I’ve put the super on today. I’ve waited for this moment for 11 months so am a little excited. putting the super on is nothing more than putting another box on top of the bottom box and took about 30 seconds. It’s great how something so simple can reap much joy! The super is the part with the Flow Hive System which is different than Langstroth hives. It’s the part that has the plastic frame/hive system that ultimately the…