Winding up the bee year

Winding up the bee year, preparing the hives for winter. At this point Chris and i have 2 hives in my back yard, and 3 hives across town, just out of the city limits. Moving Chris' two/three hives was kind of time consuming, but it's done. We have extracted honey from my two hives. Took us two goes at it, and we've got about 100 lbs of honey from them. What we have left is (for each) two hive bodies and one super. The supers, at least, are full of honey. See attached photo of the end frame from one of the hives. It's absolutely packed.

Next up is a visit to the three hives we moved late in the summer. Doubtful we'll get any further honey out of them, but you never know. It has been very hot and dry all summer, and they're in a dry field. Still, there are weeds, and some flowering plants, so it's possible they've settled down and produced some further honey. We left them with a bunch of partially extracted frames to see if they could clean things up and get their new hives all together.

All the hives have new queens. The queens are either supercedure queens, or the old queens in the swarms. None of them are more than a year old, however. A lot of the genetic material has come from the swarms we captured last year from the 'feral' hive way up in Dave Armstrong's willow tree.

Harvesting honey

Removed honey from both hives and began processing Sat 8/18.
Took 9 frames from Pkg hive, and 18 frames from swarm hive.
Surprised there was so much honey there. The capped honey is
so thick it hardly comes out of the centrifuge. We worked
until midnight spinning frames, and have left quite a bit of
honey on there because it wasn't coming out. Today the last
set of frames is being heated up in hopes they will clean out
more completely. We did start work yesterday when it was
quite warm (Chris garage), but it did cool down as the evening
progressed.

After removing and redistributing supers:

Package hive:

------------
top cover
inner cover
super (mostly empty, left on hive because there is not
        enough to process, but bees still working on it.)
queen excluder
super (really full of capped honey)
hive body
hive body
bottom board
------------


Swarm hive:

------------
top cover
inner cover
super (another work in progress)
queen excluder
super (very full of capped honey)
hive body
hive body
bottom board
------------

We didn't actually take the hives apart below the queen excluders.
Activity in the hive looks good, there are quite a few bees,
and judging from the super we left in there is plenty of honey.

MQ Hive goes on vacation

The Miracle Queen hive was moved across town this morning at 0600. Despite the early hour there were some bees out that didn't make the trip. Maybe a dozen. Sealed them up, strapped the hive together and trucked them about 3 miles away. Chris and Maggie helped me with this. Mainly, with the kayak carrier in the truck it's hard to put heavy packages in the bed, so enjoyed the help, AND the breakfast afterwards. The girls weren't real happy with the move. The instant the tape was pulled away they came boiling out, but not in attack formation. They came out and were probably prepared to sting someone, but we backed away a few feet and no one was threatened.

In a week we'll truck them back to Chris' yard, where they will be merged with his swarm hive. Which queen to keep???!

Add new supers

Well, no time to harvest honey right now, so added new super to both hives. Only 2 frames (swarm) have wax, rest are bare frame material.

Package hive:
------------
top cover
inner cover
super (new, empty)
super
queen excluder
super (from overwinter)
hive body
hive body
bottom board
------------

Swarm hive:
------------
top cover
inner cover
super (new, empty)
super
super
queen excluder
super (from overwinter)
hive body
hive body
bottom board
------------

Ready for more frames

Hive body, MQ hive. Bees now working most of frames.

Pkg hive top super. Lots more bees. More honey.

Swarm hive. More bees and more honey

.

Has been hot and dry. Near record breaking. One day my therm said 101 deg. Some pollen coming in. The mint plant is flowering and there were quite a few bees on that this morning. Other garden flowers are flowering.

Have stopped feeding MQ.

Looked in all hives today. MQ bees on 75-80% of frame surfaces. Looks like fair amount of honey being put up. Lots of new blond bees. Ready to add a super or, better, merge with Chris swarm hive. Which queen should live?

Pkg hive. More workers. Top super has a lot of capped honey, much further along than on 6/28. Time for a new super.

Swarm hive. Ditto pkg hive. Time for a new super. The recruitment of new workers indicates there is a fertile queen. Hive activity on both this and pkg hive tells me that things are probably all well down below.

Hive inspections

MQ hive has doubled in last 2 wks. Lots of capped brood visible here.

Pkg hive capping honey. Population is up??

6/28/12 80 deg, sunny.

MQ finished sugar water yesterday.

Propped the lids open on all hives since it looks to be
consistently warm to hot for awhile. Looked in all hives.

MQ is now working on 10 frame faces, up from
5 faces 14 days ago. There is some capped honey, and some capped
brood. Activity seems pretty good generally. Healthy, but they
have a ways to go to make it through the winter on their own. Still
feeding sugar water every 3-4 days.

Package hive is doing ok. Looks like more bees are working the top
super, so perhaps the new queen has been producing workers.
There is more honey in the top super now. If this hive swarmed on
5/29 it's likely then that there is a new queen and some of her
brood is hatched and at work.

Swarm hive seems ok too. About the same amount of honey in
top super. Activity on hive is good. This hive swarmed on
6/3, so it would be another week before we see a large number
of new bees.

Corral fire

A couple of pics from S hills of Scratchgravels on fire. Taken 6/26 about 1530. You can see the slurry planes dropping the red retardant. I did see big flames, but the red in the pic is retardant.

Bees seem to be doing well. Too windy to get into hives, but tomorrow? MQ i think had some brood emerge judging from all the bees out yesterday. It was very warm, 90 deg minimum.