Bees and HONEY!

The bees are doing their thing and we have loved watching them do it! This crazy frame was one that the beeswax kind of fell out of and the bees did their own thing with it. We removed this frame and gave them a new one to work on. Hopefully they will stay in the lines and make it pretty like the others. The frames were given to us so no complaining. We have one hive that is rocking it. They have filled enough supers to give us some honey and provide themselves with honey for the winter. The other hive is struggling a wee bit, but we came up with a plan that will hopefully get them back in business. It doesn't look like the smaller hive has a queen and the queen cells we saw haven't produced anything. Soooo, we noticed queen cells in our healthy hive and moved them to the weaker hive. Lo and behold we got a queen. The hive is doing well, and we think they're going to make it after all. We also placed a couple of brood frames from the larger hive into the smaller hive to boost their numbers. So far so good. Such a cool thing to watch and learn about.

He loves going out with us. I do believe he will also be a beekeeper when he's older. I love to watch him study everything about them.

Our honey collecting station. Hopefully we are far enough away from the bees.

Scrape the wax off first.

Abby will render this down to pure wax and use it in her salves.

This spinner holds two frames at a time. The bee club loans them out to any of the members that need it.

It takes a good strong arm to spin that handle. She's a strong little booger.

Next up a strong little dude.

Of course those guns for arms had no problem keeping that spinner going.

Look at that flow!

He couldn't stop watching it.

Ta-da!

The first round of honey. We ended up with 9 quarts of Spring time wildflower/tulip poplar honey.

The second round of honey was a few weeks later. It wasn't quite as much, but we still got a pretty good haul! This go round was the summer sourwood honey. It's a lighter, sweeter honey. So yummy. This time we set up our extracting operation in the feasting hall. The bees still found us!

Look at the difference in color! Left is summer sourwood and right is spring wildflower and tulip poplar.

OH MY GOODNESS! Not only were we successful in moving a queen cell to the smaller hive, but it worked and WE FOUND HER. It's just super cool. She's right in the center with the long brown abdomen. She's so pretty and she's the first queen born on the farm!

These two checking the hive frames together. I think they'll be doing this together for a long time. Love that they can bond over this!