No honey here...

I went out to take some honey off of the Minnesota Hygienic hive, my plan was to take the top two or three but I forgot how much time it takes to harvest a frame of honey without using chemicals to repel the bees. The top two boxes didn't have any honey, they were full of bees who were building wax comb, which is odd given the time of year. Another odd thing about this hive is that in the warm afternoon there is a flurry of activity at the entrance, the level of activity I'd see on a summer day when the temps were around 85.

I took the two boxes off and shook the bees onto the grass in front of the hive one frame at a time, I ran out of time (had to head to work) and ended up leaving three frames behind in one box with a mental note to visit this hive again soon.

How can a bee survive without a beekeeper!

I haven't looked at a single hive in about 6 weeks now. This is the longest I've gone without checking up on the ladies, but everything was looking good last I checked. This time of year the varroa mite becomes a significant concern but I think my hives will pull through another year without any treatments. Every hive is new this year or had a lengthy break in the brood cycle earlier in the year to keep mite numbers down. This is how the Russian honeybee keeps varroa in check, when there aren't any young bees in the hive the varroa mite can't reproduce.

The best part about this break is that I'm proving what I claim, that beekeeping doesn't have to be a lot of work. The bees know how to keep their hive healthy and they know how to put away honey for the winter. I enjoy working with them but it is good to know that I don't have to.

Of course, when I do open them up next, I may be eating these words. Without any honey.

The First Loser!

Our honey was awarded second place at the state fair, very exciting! We've got all sorts of plans on entering multiple categories in the future, but we'll see how well that motivation holds out over the next year.

Most notable is the 15.1% moisture content of the honey. Honey sold in a supermarket typically has about a 20% moisture content and really good honey has a 16% moisture content. Given the wet year we've had I'm quite impressed that the bees were able to bring the moisture down to such a low level. I'd bet that with a more careful harvesting we could bring that number down below 15%, although I'm not sure if there would be much benefit to that.

For our large fall harvest I borrowed a tan-genital extractor from a friend, it needs significant cleaning but all he asked for in return was a portion of the extracted honey and a clean extractor. I thought I was getting an amazingly good deal but now that I see how much cleaning is needed I think we're both getting a good deal!

The Silver Lining

I hadn't checked on a pair of hives I have out on a friend's farm in a while and my parents were in town for a visit so we put together 2 boxes and 20 frames and went out to see the bees. When we got there I found that both hives were healthy and doing well but they were pretty light, not enough honey to make it through the winter at this point.

We're just getting out of the annual Summer dry spell and in hindsight the bees didn't have much to forage on before the heat came on. They were started from a split I made this year and I'm expecting that they will probably be OK once the fall nectar flow starts up. I ended up not needing to use either of the two boxes I made, they both had at least ten frames that weren't drawn yet. From what I saw they hadn't drawn any comb at all in the last four weeks.

The best news in this is that I won't have any honey to harvest from those hives. It would be good if I did, but not having to harvest from that location this year means less work for me!