Rained out

Yesterday we saw the most rain so far this summer.  The bees saw it coming, too.  As we were lighting the smoker and getting ready, John noticed something interesting with them and said I needed to see it.  I left him with the smoker and went over to the hives.  It was raining bees.  Hundreds of bees cascaded out of the sky, most heading to the 1st Italians.  That hive had hundreds of bees hanging out on the side and front, waiting to go in.  I saw lots of activity outside the Sicilians' hive as well.  Somewhat sadly, the Carniolan hive just had a few workers coming in and out of theirs.

For the inspection, we opened up the Sicilians first.  Considering the impending storm I would have expected them to be really quick to get cross on us, but they decided to be Hyde instead of Jekyll.  Never can tell with those girls!  Anyway, they had maybe a quarter of the super worked over with comb and were starting to fill it with nectar, so that's exciting!  As it started to rain, we buttoned them up.

I figured we had a few minutes to take a look at the Italians before the rain really let go.  I haven't had such a hard time opening a hive cover yet.  They had that puppy glued on tight with propolis.  Once I popped that off I started on the inner cover.  If I thought the outer was fun...sheesh!  We got some great shots of the orange propolis tearing apart between the cover and the super.  Once I got it off, we couldn't have been more happy!  Their super was at least 90% full of comb and almost all of it had capped honey. 

We got them covered back up just in time for it to really start coming down and evacuated into the house. John and I hung out in the front of the house enjoying a cup o' joe and chatting.  We figure we need at least one more super to take advantage of the Italians' production, but both of us don't really have the cash to fork out on one (and we'd probably need another when the Sicilians catch up and that'll be soon).  So we came up with a messier, but cost-free plan.  While I've put out a note to a bee club emailing list for cheap supers, our current idea is to do something I did to "harvest" honey from a sample of comb that we got right before I got rid of the Carniolans' drone laying worker. 

What I did with that was put the comb in a glass jar and did sort of a double boiler trick with it, melting the whole thing.  Then I removed the jar and strained the honey through a small strainer I found in the kitchen (don't let my wife know) into another container and let it cool.  The wax drifted to the top and hardened.  I popped the cap of wax off and, voila, Raw & Unfiltered Honey!  So that's our plan with a couple of frames from the Italians this Saturday.  I need to find a cheap pot to do this because the wax doesn't come off easily (that's why we need to keep the strainer thing between us and not tell Joy).  Still, even if there's wax all over the pot, whoopie do!  Did you know that one of the ingredients in Gummy Bears is beeswax? 

Last note: On Saturday we're going to crack open the Carns to see how they are doing.  I want to do this to see if all we're doing is nursing them along through the fall so that they'll freeze over the winter or if they actually have a chance.  Really, the only way I think they'll make it is if we can find a swarm to build them up.  However, if they have a lot of fresh workers, there is a small chance they'll make it.  Here's for hopin'!

Bob