The Honeybee Wranglers » Honey http://www.littleluceyfarm.com/honeybees Trying to get a handle on these amazing creatures Mon, 16 May 2016 20:53:34 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=4.2.35 My honey was eaten http://www.littleluceyfarm.com/honeybees/index.php/2015/07/my-honey-was-eaten/ http://www.littleluceyfarm.com/honeybees/index.php/2015/07/my-honey-was-eaten/#comments Thu, 09 Jul 2015 20:23:49 +0000 http://www.littleluceyfarm.com/honeybees/?p=737 Well I’m bummed.

I decided to pull my supers today. The process went fine. The fume board worked like a charm even though the juice is about three years old.

I removed the third super which I put on about a month ago to be sure the hive wouldn’t swarm. I knew it was mostly empty. The next two boxes should have been full, but they were light coming off. One weighed 31# and the other 35#. I pulled out some frames and I found most of them had a little bit of capped honey in the top corners and the rest of the cells were empty. Frame after frame.
The frames on the ends (frame 1 and frame 10) in both boxes were almost fully capped, so I really believe that these were all capped a few weeks ago.
I am pretty sure that these all had honey in them three or four weeks ago.
Below these supers are three medium brood boxes. I decided to dig into these to see what was there. I don’t usually do this. I kind of leave things alone and don’t like to disturb the brood area. I found a few frames with capped brood, but not much else. I don’t think there is a laying queen in the hive. Maybe this was the hive that swarmed two weeks ago, but I still doubt that they would have collected on the side of a different hive.
Shit. Shit. Shit. Pardon my French. I guess this proves that it was really ever my honey in the first place.
]]> http://www.littleluceyfarm.com/honeybees/index.php/2015/07/my-honey-was-eaten/feed/ 0 Extraction party http://www.littleluceyfarm.com/honeybees/index.php/2014/07/extraction-party/ http://www.littleluceyfarm.com/honeybees/index.php/2014/07/extraction-party/#comments Mon, 14 Jul 2014 15:05:07 +0000 http://www.littleluceyfarm.com/honeybees/?p=465 This past Saturday we gathered at Mel and Dawn’s house to do some honey extracting. Mel had the most to extract. I had a little bit. Kristien chose not to take any honey away from her bees this year, and Liz didn’t have any as all of her hives were started this year.

We had some problems with the extractor, but were able to diagnose and fix them with the addition of a bearing spacer between the frames holding cage and the bottom stabilizer. We all recalled a similar problem last year and a similar solution, but the extractor arrived without the extra spacer and the same grinding problem. There needs to be some better information/instructions provided so the extractor doesn’t get ruined.

We were there over six hours in all, and it was a sticky affair, but a good time was had by all. Kristien stopped by with her brother, before a trip to the airport, and then returned after. Thanks to Liz for providing some country ham sliders. We found it a treat to slide the bun under the running honey for a honey ham effect. That was delicious.

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