Homemade Uncapping Tank

This weekend is quickly approaching and we have been trying to get ready for the extraction process. Last year we didn't have an uncapping tank so we tried to tie one of our plastic queen excluders to the top of a big plastic bin. It worked.... kind of. Let's just say it was a pain to use. This year I decided to build my own uncapping tank. Here is how it went:

I started by stealing one of Chris' plastic containers- one of those she usually uses to store old blankets, clothes, etc. I cut a couple of notches just big enough to fit a 2X4 on either side of the container. Then I drilled holes into the sides on both ends a few inches from the top.

I then cut a 2X4 just a little longer than the container is wide and put a screw all the way through about half way up the board.

Next I cut a couple of dowels the same length as the 2X4. I cut some hardware cloth down to size, wrapped the ends of it around the dowels, and laced it together with wire.

I put it all together by setting the hardware cloth down in the container (without the dowels) and then sliding the dowels in through the holes on one side, through the end loops in the hardware cloth, and out the other side. Then I set the 2X4 in its notches with the screw pointing up.

I should be able to place the end of a frame full of honey on the screw, uncap one side, and rotate it around on the screw to uncap the other side. The caps should get caught on the hardware cloth while the honey drips through to the bottom.

I put the 2X4 in the center so I could uncap onto either side of the tank- in retrospect, I wonder if it would have been better to put it further to one end in order to leave more room for the caps to fall. I suppose I can still change it if I need to.

The only thing left is to cut a hole near the bottom and install a honey gate. If this contraption works well I will see about doing that next year.

We Have Set A Date!

It's official! We have committed to a date and will be extracting honey next Saturday, September 4, 2010. We will take pictures of the whole process and post them here when we are done.

I plan on taking a couple of jars to Rawlins, WY on September 11th for a silent auction at a Constitution Day dinner and fund raiser for the newly organized Constitution Party of Wyoming. It would be well worth your while to make it there that day- Scott Bradley, a constitutional authority, will be the guest speaker. Besides that, you can bid on my honey! If anyone would like more details I would be happy to pass them along.

In a non-bee related subject. I dug the beets this afternoon. Here is a photo of the beet harvest.

This is our first year with beets so we didn't plant very many. We will can them on Monday. If all goes well and we enjoy eating them this winter we might plant more of them next year.

This is always a busy time of year. Besides the beets, all the rest of the produce in our yard is getting ready to harvest. That also means canning and processing. Honey will be extracted next weekend and will need to be bottled. Tomatoes will all be ripening soon and that means tomato sauce. Apples will be ready to be picked sometime in September. Last year we canned apple pie filling; we are thinking about making apple sauce this year. Grapes will be picked about the first week in October. They will become juice or jelly. Onions, peppers, and some tomatoes will become salsa. We will dig the potatoes and carrots about the second week in October and will be used to can stew. It all keeps us busy- but it is so satisfying.

Her Majesty Has Returned

The queen is home! Over the last few weeks I have been dealing with queens that moved up into the honey supers to lay their eggs.

Georgia's queen moved up one super, laid some eggs and went back down. I put the queen excluder on her and we have all been happy ever since. Virginia's queen, on the other hand, moved up two supers to start laying eggs. I thought she had moved back down as well so I put the queen excluder on. Last week I discovered that she had laid more eggs in the honey super and that the queen excluder had actually trapped her up there instead of down in the deep hive bodies. As I reported last week, I brushed all the bees in all four honey supers back down in to the deep hive bodies and replaced the queen excluder.

I checked on Virginia's honey supers again today and found plenty of capped brood and some larva. I didn't find any eggs and all the larva was more than a few days old. A good sign! Here is a photo of one of the frames out of that super.

Not a bad brood pattern- just not where I want it to be. There are some larva around the outside edges of the brood. This super was brand new with empty, combless frames when I put it on the hive, so the bees have worked hard to draw comb on all those empty frames.

I did do a quick check down in the upper deep hive body to make sure the queen was down there. I only pulled a few frames and saw lots of larva just one to three days old. That was enough for me and I put the hive back together- I did not want to risk injuring the queen now. No more requeening this year!

As I was putting the supers back on I noticed how heavy they are getting. They are all full of honey (except for the super full of brood) and in the process of being capped. I did the shake test where you hold the frame horizontally and give it a shake. If the contents drip out the honey is not yet ripe; if it stays in you've got honey in that comb. I predict that if we pull the supers off during the first week of September, we should get a lot of good thick ripe honey. Some of the brood in the super might not have emerged by then. If that is the case we will just leave that super in place until they do emerge. We won't be getting any ripe honey out of that super anyway.

We are getting close- I can't wait!

Her Majesty Has Returned

The queen is home! Over the last few weeks I have been dealing with queens that moved up into the honey supers to lay their eggs.

Georgia's queen moved up one super, laid some eggs and went back down. I put the queen excluder on her and we have all been happy ever since. Virginia's queen, on the other hand, moved up two supers to start laying eggs. I thought she had moved back down as well so I put the queen excluder on. Last week I discovered that she had laid more eggs in the honey super and that the queen excluder had actually trapped her up there instead of down in the deep hive bodies. As I reported last week, I brushed all the bees in all four honey supers back down in to the deep hive bodies and replaced the queen excluder.

I checked on Virginia's honey supers again today and found plenty of capped brood and some larva. I didn't find any eggs and all the larva was more than a few days old. A good sign! Here is a photo of one of the frames out of that super.

Not a bad brood pattern- just not where I want it to be. There are some larva around the outside edges of the brood. This super was brand new with empty, combless frames when I put it on the hive, so the bees have worked hard to draw comb on all those empty frames.

I did do a quick check down in the upper deep hive body to make sure the queen was down there. I only pulled a few frames and saw lots of larva just one to three days old. That was enough for me and I put the hive back together- I did not want to risk injuring the queen now. No more requeening this year!

As I was putting the supers back on I noticed how heavy they are getting. They are all full of honey (except for the super full of brood) and in the process of being capped. I did the shake test where you hold the frame horizontally and give it a shake. If the contents drip out the honey is not yet ripe; if it stays in you've got honey in that comb. I predict that if we pull the supers off during the first week of September, we should get a lot of good thick ripe honey. Some of the brood in the super might not have emerged by then. If that is the case we will just leave that super in place until they do emerge. We won't be getting any ripe honey out of that super anyway.

We are getting close- I can't wait!

Trapped Queen

A couple of weeks ago, while inspecting the hives, I discovered that both queens had moved up and laid eggs in the honey supers. Georgia had moved honey out of the super directly above the deep hive bodies and the queen laid eggs there. In Virginia, however, the queen crossed over a whole super of capped honey to lay eggs in the next box up. I looked through the supers and tried to find the queens. When I didn’t find either of them I figured she must be down in the deep hive bodies. So I put the queen excluders back on in order to keep the queens down low. This would allow the brood in the honey supers to mature and emerge before we extract honey. I do not want to deal with brood in the supers while we are trying to extract.

I checked out both hives last Tuesday to see how the bees were doing with capping the honey in the supers. I found that the bees have collected just a little more nectar- I think that the nectar flow is slowing down some. I was also expecting to find some brood where the queens had been laying. That is exactly what I found in Georgia- a few frames of capped brood directly above the queen excluder I put on last a couple of weeks ago. Georgia is capping more of the honey in the supers. I did not inspect any lower into the brood nest, but she looks like she is doing well. I think this new queen is a good one- the population has grown significantly since Georgia was queenless.

Georgia also had capped brood where the queen had been laying up in the honey super- but I also found larva and eggs! Apparently, when I put the queen excluder back on the queen had not moved down into the deep hive bodies. My queen was trapped up in the honey supers! Luckily she hadn’t laid eggs in more than that one medium super- at least I didn’t see any eggs or brood in any of the others. I looked over each frame in that super and didn’t see the queen anywhere- I am horrible at finding the queen. I have not seen a queen since just a few weeks after we hived our packages in April of 2009. Anyway, in order to make sure I got the queen back down in the deeps, I pulled all 4 medium supers off the hive and went through each super frame by frame. I looked over each frame, brushed all the bees off in to the deep hive body, and set the beeless frame off to the side. After all the bees were cleaned out of the supers I replaced the queen excluder and put the supers back on the hive. I am hoping the queen made it back down where I want her. I will check again next week and will hopefully find eggs in the deep hive bodies only.

As I mentioned the nectar flow is slowing down. The alfalfa fields are still blooming but not nearly like they were earlier in the summer. I am not certain when we will extract our honey. Last year we pulled the supers off in the middle of September. That seemed to work well- I fed them sugar syrup in the fall and they had time to build up enough stores to get them through the winter. I did do some supplemental feeding last January because I thought they were getting low but realized later that it was not needed.

I guess we will see how things go. Hopefully we won’t see any new brood in the honey supers and we can pull the supers after all of that brood has emerged. I’ll keep you updated.

Eggs In The Honey Supers

Eggs in the honey supers? Eggs do not belong in the honey supers, but that is where I found them today. Actually, laying eggs up in the honey supers is not wrong, but I would rather that the queen stay down in the deep hive bodies and reserve the honey supers for "my" honey.

As I went through the honey supers I found that Georgia still has a lot of uncapped honey. I hope the bees get busy and cap it all off during this next month. Georgia does have the bottom super (directly above the broodnest) full of capped honey. At least it was until a couple of weeks ago. The bees have been emptying the honey out of the bottom half of the center frames in the bottom super. It looked like they were making the brood nest bigger for the queen to lay. I had removed the queen excluders from the hives earlier this year because queens are not supposed to cross capped honey. Since I had capped honey in the bottom supers I thought that removing the excluders would encourage the workers to move up and make more honey. Anyway, since the queen excluder had been removed and the bees emptied the honey out of some of the frames, the queen moved up and laid a bunch of eggs in the honey super. I made sure the queen was not in the super and put the queen excluder back on. This will keep the queen from laying any more eggs up there. Now I will be able to extract honey after the brood from the existing eggs emerges without getting baby bees in the honey.

I did not inspect any more of Georgia's broodnest. During the last inspection I discovered that Georgia is now queen right and I have decided not to dig down into the broodnest anymore this summer. I don't want to take a chance on causing any more queen problems.

Last week I took Virginia's newest honey super full of empty frames and put it down in the 2nd honey super position. So there is one honey super full of capped honey directly above the brood nest and the new empty super directly above that. My thinking was that, even if there was not time this summer for the bees to store honey in this super, if the bees could at least draw some comb then this super would have a head start next summer. I figured that moving the super down closer to the majority of the bees would facilitate faster comb production. I had removed the queen excluder from Virginia as well as I expected the super of capped honey to serve as Virginia's excluder. When I finally made it down to the empty super, I found that the bees had been busy drawing comb. It was not complete but they had made a good start.

Here is a photo of the new comb in the empty super.
The preceding photo shows some nice white new comb but does not show what I was actually looking at. This next photo is a close up of the same frame. Look at what is inside the cells. Eggs! I thought these frames would be safe from the queen with all the capped honey directly below it. The next photo shows what the queen had to cross to lay those eggs.

That capped honey is beautiful, isn't it? Apparently capped honey will not contain a queen if she wants to get to the other side. After Virginia's inspection I put the queen excluder back on her as well. I really don't want to have to deal with brood in the honey supers come extraction time.

Last time I inspected Virginia her new queen hadn't been around for long. She had been laying eggs, but they were pretty scattered. She hadn't quite gotten her legs under her yet. I went through her brood nest today, and it looks like she has settled down nicely. I saw several frames in both the upper and lower deep hive bodies with nice tight brood patterns. It does feel good to have both hives queen right again.

There has been something interesting going on with Virginia's hive this summer. I don't' know if it is common or rare, but I was not expecting it. You see both of our hives have screened bottom boards and sit side by side on a solid platform. It appears as though some of Virginia's bees have gone underneath the hive and attached comb to the underside of the screened bottom board. Here is a photo looking down in to the hive at the comb underneath.

Sorry for the fuzzy picture- the camera had a hard time deciding what to focus on. This comb is actually running side to side- at a 90 degree angle to the frames above it. There is not a lot of space under there, and I assume they are storing honey in the comb. In this next photo you can see some of the bees coming and going from the side.

There are a couple of bees there fanning the entrance.

The bees were extremely calm today. I think it was probably because they are both finally queen right. I have wondered though if smoker fuel affects the bees' mood during inspections. Last summer I used cedar chips as my fuel and this summer I bought a bag of shredded recycled cardboard. With the cardboard fuel the bees have been cranky all summer. Besides that the cardboard smoke is stinky and leaves a lot of creosote gunking up the top of the smoker. I switched back to cedar chips today- cedar smoke just smells so good.

We Have Orientation Flights..... Again!

Earlier in the summer I used to see huge swarms of bees in front of the hives doing orientation flights on a nearly daily basis. Since the hives have been having queen problems I haven't seen any orientation flights in quite some time. Yesterday however, I saw a small group of bees in front of the hives flying up and down and side to side at right angles. I saw the same thing again today. Even though there weren't a lot of bees orienting themselves to the hives' locations it was nice to see them at it again. I'm sure that the bees performing the flights were all from Georgia's queen. Virginia's queen is not old enough to have produced bees performing orientation flights yet. The bees in front of Virginia were from the frames of brood I moved over from Georgia to try to prevent any laying workers from developing.

I did go through the honey supers this afternoon. The bees are finally starting to draw a little comb in the newest supers with empty frames. Virginia has just a little less than 3 medium supers full of honey right now. Georgia has about the same, but remember that we extracted one of Georgia's supers earlier in the summer and put the empty super back on. The bees are continuing to move the honey out of the bottom super directly above the brood nest. Next time I do an inspection I will put the queen excluder back on so I can still extract those frames without worrying about brood getting in the way.