HONEY!!!

Today was the August field day. Only two folks showed up, but I understand, it is summertime! They, along with Laura, my daughter, helped me check the hives. We collected only six frames of honey total. We took three mediums from the vertical hive that is the first from Mary Bouma. There were a lot more frames of honey, but it wasn't fully capped. I would have left it all, but really wanted to extract just a little for myself and to send back to school with Laura for her morning coffee! There will be a lot more to come from that hive. We next checked the long white hive. It is the late nuc from Mary Bouma. It had progressed to 12 frames and was doing well. It was very calm and didn't really notice we were there. Next we went to the long blue hive. It keeps making the make frames fatter and ignoring everything else, so I took three frames of honey from the back of the hive and moved a straight drawn comb up to break up a pattern of cross-combing that had developed in the front. I plan to put the extracted frames back in the hive in a few days and see what they do. They hadn't done anything with the empty frames I had put in between the fat combs of honey, so I moved them back out. After that, we checked the small hive, which is covering nine frames now and is looking pretty good.

We closed everything up and went back to my garage with the six frames, three mediums and three deeps of honey. The deeps were fat and were new comb, but we handled them gently and got them extracted without incident. The mediums were a little skinny, but we got them extracted without incident as well. All six were foundationless. I couldn't help but bottling up most of my little stash and taking a picture. I also had a pint for Laura to take to school and some left in the bottling bucket for now. I will collect some more honey next month, then leave the rest for the bees.

This picture was taken by the hives today, August 11, 2018. This is just the early goldenrod, but that means here we are, already winding down the summer of foraging. At least they have done well and should be able to store up plenty of honey for winter as well as a little for me!