A Delicious Solution!

The bees continue to beard on Hive 2. As I expect 2 new queens to arrive Friday, I decided to split the hive last Saturday to prepare them for a new queen before they swarm. I moved 2 frames with brood and eggs, 3 frames of honey and added 5 new Pierco frames sprayed with Honey-B-Healthy and 1:1 to a cypress deep. I shook some more bees into the deep but I doubt they will stay as I am not moving the new colony out of the bee yard. Instead, I'm hoping the hive makes it with the nurse bees that were on the brood frames and the new queen I'll add Friday or Saturday. I left 2 frames of brood in the original hive and replaced the 2 I took for the split with 2 new Piercos sprayed with HbH. This removed bees from the original hive and allowed me to place empty frames in as well. I then rotated the deeps and harvested 5 frames of beautifully capped honey from one of the medium supers (fig 1 and 2). My hope is all of this will keep the hive from swarming.



After emailing Mike Palmer (the Vermont queen breeder who is sending me the new queens) I learned I did the split too soon. I should have done it the day before putting in the new queens so the bees did not start building emergency cells when they realize they are queenless. Now 'll have to go through the hive and cut out any emergency cells I find so they do not kill the new queen. Lovely...

The delicious part about this "solution" is the 14 pounds of honey Gayla and I extracted from the 5 medium wood/wax frames we harvested! Using our new Maxant 3100H (fig 3) was easy and once I realized you need to gradually start spinning the frames or you'll destroy the foundation (oops) the process went smoothly. We let the honey sit in a honey bucket overnight and bottled the honey the next day (fig 4). Measuring the water content with a refractometer, the honey is 17% water. I've read 16% is optimal but as honey is hygroscopic and we are currently living in a rain forest (5.5"of rain in June...) I'm happy. They've made plenty of honey and I could easily harvest another 30 pounds from Hive 2 but with the wet weather, I'd rather leave it for them.

Bring on the new queens!