🐝💗Our Backyard Beekeeping Journey!💗🐝

[5Australorpasaures]

Guess they don't like Formic Pro, all 3 hives settled back in by dark.

 

[5Australorpasaures]

We'll be checking on our bees this Friday. Cool, nice, dry. It would be really cool if we got 6 frames of honey again... That equaled 10 quart jars last time.

Here today 80F and slight breeze and low humidity. Real pleasure working the bees. The 3 mediums are pushing 120 +/- lbs. Busy tomorrow, extract Thursday, no rain predicted for the next 9 days so they'll have plenty of time to glean the frames for the freezer.

 

[drstratton]

Finally! Nice window for the Formic Pro treatment and to my surprise 3 out of 4 mediums wall to wall and capped, 4th about 60%. I'll let them finish it and extract for spring feed. I know, OK for consumption when using FP. Not Good enough scooter, it's a chemical, it's a food product, not for human consumption! Kinda quirky I am. The 3 deeps were also wall to wall, large numbers of bees DW is working on pic that I will post soon? Strange season this year.

That's awesome. You've got to do what you're comfortable with.

Looking forward to pictures.

 

[drstratton]

We'll be checking on our bees this Friday. Cool, nice, dry. It would be really cool if we got 6 frames of honey again... That equaled 10 quart jars last time.

That would be great if you could get that many.

 

[drstratton]

Guess they don't like Formic Pro, all 3 hives settled back in by dark. View attachment 4205310

The definitely didn't like it did they. That's a bunch of bees.

 

[drstratton]

We Just got home from camping. Looks like our temps will still be up in mid 90's to 100+ for the next week. Then it will drop down to lower 90's to mid 80's. It was much cooler in the mountains...lol

We'll be doing our 3rd OAV treatment tonight. Might pull some capped frames this weekend, tbd.

Drove by the buckwheat field on our way home, it is in full bloom. My husband did a little research. I guess the bees can only pull nectar from it for a few hours in the mornings. I've read about other nectar sources like that, but can't remember off the top of my head which ones. He also found charts on honey and pollen colors. Buckwheat is the darkest honey, from what he read.

Not bee related. The lake where we camped. We had perfect weather.
Walupt

 

[cavemanrich]

Just curious,, Did you spot any wild bees while camping??

 

[Sally PB]

Drove by the buckwheat field on our way home, it is in full bloom. My husband did a little research. I guess the bees can only pull nectar from it for a few hours in the mornings. I've read about other nectar sources like that, but can't remember off the top of my head which ones. He also found charts on honey and pollen colors. Buckwheat is the darkest honey, from what he read.

Interesting! I see honeybees, bumble bees and a few different kinds of wasps on the buckwheat I planted just about any time of day. I'd run out and look now (5:30, EDT), but I'm about to go take a shower.

Hubby said he had buckwheat honey when he was a kid and thought it was the best honey of all.

Fingers crossed for Friday!

 

[Sally PB]

Here's a question. When we looked two weeks ago, there were 2 fully capped frames. We didn't want to do the set up/clean up for just two frames, so we decided to wait.

In addition to the two frames, there were 2? 3? 4? frames that were partially capped, but still had some open comb full of nectar.

If we have a frame like that, can we pull it, lay it flat (in a covered tote, I'm thinking) and let the uncapped stuff drain out so that we can harvest the capped stuff? Has anyone done this? Does it work, or is there a different/better way?

I remember one frame that had one side capped, and about half of the other side capped, while the rest was "work in progress."

I'd catch the nectar and leave it out for the girls. (We refer to the bees as "the girls." My chickens are "the ladies.")

 

[R2elk]

Here's a question. When we looked two weeks ago, there were 2 fully capped frames. We didn't want to do the set up/clean up for just two frames, so we decided to wait.

In addition to the two frames, there were 2? 3? 4? frames that were partially capped, but still had some open comb full of nectar.

If we have a frame like that, can we pull it, lay it flat (in a covered tote, I'm thinking) and let the uncapped stuff drain out so that we can harvest the capped stuff? Has anyone done this? Does it work, or is there a different/better way?

I remember one frame that had one side capped, and about half of the other side capped, while the rest was "work in progress."

I'd catch the nectar and leave it out for the girls. (We refer to the bees as "the girls." My chickens are "the ladies.")

I remove the caps and spin it all out.