With Swarmest Regards

Swarms happen. Even when you try to prevent them by doing splits to thin a colony’s population, the bees will still occasionally get in swarm mode, and there’s nothing you can do about it.

As you know, The Engineer already caught one swarm, almost certainly from our crowded hive. But before treating the hives, we added a second ten-frame deep box to that colony to alleviate the crowding.

Also we’d already split the four strongest hives, some of them twice. So, we were in pretty good shape going into the ten days of not opening the hive.

Or so we thought.

If you’re counting, the total colonies from the five over-wintered hive look like this:

5 hives overwintered (four strongish, one not as strong) + 4 splits to friends + 2 we kept + 1 swarm caught = 12. 

We also ended up giving a full hive to a friend, which brought us back to 7 (6 regular Langstroth and LoLa). 

Cut to Saturday morning when I was at the gym and got a text from The Engineer. 

“#4 is swarming.” 

This is the hive that we thought probably had already swarmed, the one we gave the extra box too. 

So, my husband went outside and frantically re-sprayed all the boxes we have out to catch swarms. And it worked.

But first, they flew around for a while.

This is a picture taken from a video. All the little dots, that look like light reflections, are bees in flight.

Some settled on the brush at the side of our house before landing on the tree with the swarm box. The photo below was taken when they were about halfway done walking into the box. 

A while later, they were mostly in the box.

It was a big swarm, so we were afraid they would swarm again because the box seemed too small for them, but they stayed. Once they began bringing in pollen, we called another friend who brought over a box and frames. Yesterday, he and The Engineer moved them in, and they seem to be fine. The friend will pick them up sometime next week. 

Hive math was now at 13. 

But, wait! There’s more. 

On Sunday morning, I looked out the window to see #3 swarming. This one is the little hive. It was weak coming out of winter, so we put it in a five-frame nuc hive so it didn’t have more space than it could defend. Its configuration at the time of the swarm was two deep five-frame boxes and a medium five-frame honey super. 

Up it flew into the trees, eventually congregating on a tree about fifty feet above us. 

Since there was no way we could get it down, we did the next best thing. We set up a hive beneath the tree, along with other boxes in the yard, all sprayed with Swarm Commander. 

Eventually, they began to dissipate, and though I’m not 100% sure, I think they went back in their hive because the entrance got very busy. 

We were leaving for a camping trip, so there wasn’t much we could do except hope they chose one of the offered boxes when they swarmed again, as we knew they almost certainly would.

When we returned, a colony had set up housekeeping in the box we’d set below the tree.

Current hive count from original 5 = 14.

Are we done with swarms? I’m not sure. When we were in that hive (more on that adventure up next), it was still extremely crowded.

Yesterday was the first time we were home long enough to check hives since the ten-day treatment finished.

We began with LoLa, thinking it would be easiest. No lifting necessary, just pull out a frame at a time, add more frames if needed, and move on.

What could be simpler?

Well, it would have been simple if the hive had a queen, but they didn’t.

Frames and frames of honey, pollen and nectar, with a few capped brood cells, but no eggs, no larvae, and no queen in sight.

WTF.

Oh, yeah. I remember this. It happened the last time we used the two strip method of formic acid for mites.

But, no problem. #5 has been super busy, with lots of bearding. We’ll steal a few frames of eggs from it.

Except, they have no eggs or larvae, and not much brood either. The Engineer did spot a queen — possibly a virgin because she looked small and kind of ragged — running around on a honey and nectar frame.

They were all honey and nectar frames. Both hives were full of honey/nectar frames, although most was uncapped.

And bees — there were lots and lots of bees. They were seething with bees, overflowing with bees, crazy with bees.

Okay, #4 probably won’t have eggs since they just swarmed, but they should have queen cells.

So, we had to open #4, while LoLa and #5 were still semi-open, which only added to the chaos, with thousands of bees being confused because we keep messing with their home.

Thankfully, #4 had queen cells, many queen cells, both open and closed.

Also, #4 is a very calm hive, and some calm genetics could only be helpful in two hives that are queenless. 

We divvied up the cells between the three hives and closed up shop. 

All three hives are crowded, so a break in brood rearing will do them good. With luck, they will have thinned a little by the time the queens emerge and none will swarm with a virgin queen. 

I’m not counting on it. 

On a side note, because some of the queen cells were open with larvae, and others were closed, we didn’t pull off any, just distributed frames with cells on them to all three hives.

This is not ideal. People who know a lot more than me say you should leave only the two largest, possibly even just the largest.

In the best scenario, we would have done this and used the extra cells to create a couple nucs with brood frames and some of the extra honey/nectar frames. (Here’s an article on how to properly move queen cells.)

This would have helped with the overcrowding. 

Unfortunately, we didn’t have the equipment to do this (because of the earlier swarms), neither of us felt qualified to cut away queen cells, we’d been working in the heat all afternoon, and evening was closing in.

I am concerned #4 and #5 will swarm as soon as they get queens because they are still bearding like crazy. 

And we didn’t even get to look in #6S (the first swarm), #2, #2A, or #3. Who knows what’s happening in those boxes? They could also be without queens, although #3 should have queen cells since they just swarmed.

It’s supposed to rain for the next few days, but we’re hoping for a window of good weather so we can get in and find out.

I’ll keep you posted.

Addendum: I also got stung yesterday. I kept thinking there was something in my bee jacket — like the tickle of little legs, but when I looked, I didn’t see anything and thought I was imagining things. Now, I’m not so sure. When we eventually (finally!) finished, my elbow felt kind of funny, and I realized I’d been stung. Still, I just assumed I’d hit a bee with my arm, and it had stung me through my jacket. Today, however, I was washing clothes — including our bee jackets — and found a dead bee on the floor, stinger out of her body. Either way, I have a fat elbow at the moment. Perils of being a beekeeper!

Maiden Voyage of Belle and Noprat: A Photoblog

Onion bag at the ready, we prepare to put in.

Looking up through one of the many bridges over Black River in Lorain.

Belle on Black River — 17 mile per hour winds made paddling a challenge, but she handles like a champ!

The Ghost Ship

The Engineer’s never seen a steel mill he won’t explore.

The end of another beautiful day on the water (and a great upper body workout too!)

A Break from the Bees

With the bees in the process of being treated with Formic Pro, The Engineer and I turned our attention elsewhere.

We spent most of last week preparing for and having a garage sale with our friend MJ. She kindly hosts it at her house, partly because we live on such a busy road that no one stops for garage sales and partly because her township hosts a community sale event.

I’ll be the first to admit I am extremely opinionated about how sales should be run, although in my defense, I’ve held and shopped at hundreds so I think I can claim a certain expertise. I even wrote a series of posts about the subject on my first blog, “Reading, Writing, Ranting, and Raving.” (If you’re interested, you can find the posts here.)

MJ and The Engineer humor me, and I’d like to think it’s because my methods work, but perhaps I am deluding myself. 🙂

It takes time to properly organize, set up and run a garage sale, but we enjoy each other’s company so time passed quickly. The customers were also pleasant. We recognized a few from last year, and were surprised when some visited more than once this year.

More importantly, many boxes of things we no longer need left our house never to return.

We did pretty well monetarily, partly because sometime last year, I had a brain wave about trying to sell honey. This turned out to be one of my more brilliant ideas because we sold it all. Seriously! Our shelves are completely empty until we extract again.

I think we can give MJ credit for a big part of the honey sales. She started offering tastes from a jar of creamed honey we’d given her, and once people tasted, they bought. Several even took my info for possible future purchases.

Three hours after we closed on Saturday, the remaining items were packed for donation (or next year’s sale), all the tables were folded and put away, most the donations were dropped off at Goodwill, and we were sitting at a Mexican restaurant drinking beer and margaritas.

Our money from the sale will come in handy because last week we also bought two more kayaks, both singles. This is not because we don’t enjoy tandem paddling Mary Rose’. We just fancied having the option of taking out a single when we feel like it.

I found The Engineer’s Wilderness Systems Tarpon 105 on CraigsList, not far from where Darling Daughter lives. Bonus! We got to have lunch with her and her partner.

After scouring several sources for something for me to paddle, I found an Ocean Malibu 9.5 that wasn’t too far out of the way of our drive home. In the process of reading reviews for the model, however, I discovered I could buy a new (slightly blemished) one for $50 more and have it shipped.

It came two days ago. The shipping company was supposed to call to arrange delivery, but instead the kayak showed up in a semi, which stopped it on our road, blocking traffic at the busiest time of day as the driver began hauling my kayak out the back and dragging it across the concrete.

“Don’t drag it!” The Engineer warned.

“We’ll take it from here!” I cried.

We were both trying to keep the driver from damaging the hull. I realize it’s going to get banged up in the river, but it should at least start out un-dinged.

I wonder what he would have done if we’d not been home. It was a hot day, and the boat was wrapped in plastic with a warning not to leave it outside in the wrapper because it might warp.

We’d been gone all day for a belated Father’s Day bike ride with Darling Daughter, and were twenty minutes away from leaving for a beekeeping meeting when the truck showed up.

The delivery sheet even instructed the driver to make prior arrangements before delivery, but when I mentioned this, he laughed and said, “Oh, that never happens.”

Maybe I’m being a little persnickety about it, but a kayak is a fairly big item (as well as a fairly big expense), and I do think the customer should be given fair warning of delivery date and time. For these reasons, I called the company I ordered from to let them know that — contrary to what they had told me — the company responsible for delivery did not contact me to make arrangements.

The customer service rep seemed stunned to learn this, which made me feel somewhat vindicated. I mean, I’m sure they don’t want to be telling customers something will be handled a particular way if that’s not what’s actually happening. It doesn’t reflect well on their company.

Still, all’s well that ends well. And here she is, Ma Belle — short for My Beautiful Bluebell.

Of course, there are some responsibilities that go along with owning three kayaks.

For one, we had to register the two new ones. Also, we — and by “we,” I mean The Engineer — also had to figure out how to transport them.

It turns out we can slide mine into the back of our van and tie his to the roof rack in the much the same way we do Mary Rose’.

The biggist issue is how to store them. In the winter, they can go in the hangar with the plane, but in the summer, when we’ll be kayaking more frequently, we want them at home.

A boat house isn’t feasible, and we don’t have a barn or shed, so The Engineer is going to make some kind of rack. I’m not worried about it because he’s very clever about stuff like this, and I know he’ll come up with a workable solution.

At the moment, however, our garage looks like this, with only enough room for a single car.

But to return to our busy Monday (when the kayak was delivered) — that morning, we met Darling Daughter in Mount Vernon (Ohio, not George Washington’s former residence) to ride a segment of the Kokosing Gap Trail.

The Engineer and I enjoyed exploring part of this rail-trail last year, but hadn’t ridden the bit between Mount Vernon and Gambier. It was beautiful, running alongside the Kokosing River for much of the way, crossing it several times via old railroad bridges.

We went to lunch afterward, and right across from the restaurant, someone had flower-bombed their balcony. I just love it when people do things like this. Although it may have been just for their enjoyment, I know those beautiful colors must brighten the day of anyone who sees them.

Also, the owner of the restaurant clearly appreciates a little sass because one of the servers wore a t-shirt that said, “Bad choice. Good story,” and the other also had some kind of smart-alecky expression on hers.

Then there were these two signs in the women’s room (and, yes, I did actually go back to the table and got my phone so I could take pictures).

I like the second one best. It reminds me of the Instagram story about a man telling a little girl that when she grows up she could be a flight attendant just like the ones on the plane they were on.

The little girl replied, “Or I could own the plane.”

I love the story so much; I don’t even care if it’s true.

After lunch, we hugged DD goodbye, and you better believe we went back to the river to check out the put-in spots for future kayak trips.

Although it looked a bit shallow, it was very clean.

Even better was the fact someone had begun the “Onion Bag Project.”

A little background: Whenever we kayak (or hike or cycle), we always pick up “treasure” (sarcastic for litter) along the way. When we mentioned this to Robb (last week’s kayak instructor), he said onion bags are a great way to carry treasure in a kayak, and I’d made a mental note to get hold of a large bag of onions or potatoes.

It turned out I didn’t even need to do that because volunteers have taken it upon themselves to encourage litter pickup by providing bags at put-in and take-out points along some Ohio rivers including the Kokosing.

How cool is that!

I took two because although we weren’t kayaking that day, I knew we’d use them many times.

We can begin tomorrow when we take Belle and Noprat (The Engineer’s boat) out for an inaugural paddle.

Beekeeping Work May Wax, But It Rarely Wanes

In many ways, beekeeping in Ohio is a fair weather business because the bulk of the labor is done from February to October or November.

However, even during the winter months, when it’s too cold to open the hives, we continue to focus, although not as heavily, on beekeeping tasks — reviewing equipment and replacing damaged items, going to meetings and other educational events to learn how to become a better keeper, and planning for the next season.

The same is true during the fourteen days we are keeping out of our hives as they are being treated with Formic Pro.

Today, we drove to Ashland County to purchase more frames.

Honestly, sometimes it feels like we spend our whole life buying more frames and/or boxes. And still, we run short.

Luckily, a few years ago we went to a beekeeping conference where there were several Amish beekeeping suppliers in attendance. Their prices were, and are, considerably lower than most other suppliers because they make their their wooden ware and sell it directly to beekeepers. We realized then how fortunate we are to live only a county or two away from these small businesses.

After purchasing products from Arrowhead Bee Supply at that conference and several others, we consider ourselves loyal customers. It was Arrowhead who built our horizontal hive, LoLa, which we picked up from their shop.

It’s a bit different doing business within an Amish community. Of course, Arrowhead has no web presence. Also, they don’t take credit cards. One of the young men did call us a few times about the long Langstroth hive, but I kind of think the phone is either a community one or only for the business (although we didn’t see it in their little office). They do generally stock the more common wooden equipment, but if you want something special, you need to either write a letter or go see them.

Because we’ve been running low on frames (again!), we decided today it was time for another visit. We ended up buying forty frames and picking up a hive kit for a friend of ours.

The Yoder family runs the endeavor, and they are always pleasant to deal with. The patriarch of the family has hives, and his sons all know at least a little about bees. It’s fun to chat with them, and they were eager to hear how LoLa is working out.

However, when we returned home — and here’s where we return to the “there’s always beekeeping work to do” theme — our little excursion meant I now had forty frames to wax.

If I recall correctly, no one in our beginner beekeeping class ever mentioned this job. Of course, it’s entirely possible someone did talk about it, and I missed it. There’s a lot of information thrown at would-be beekeepers during those classes, so who knows?

I remember learning about the task from one of the Queen Right Colonies family members. 

“But, don’t they come waxed?” I asked in confusion. I mean, read the description. It says “with thinner cell walls, true-to-nature cell dimensions, and a single, heavy coat of 100% pure capping wax.” 

Was I missing something?

Apparently, I was. It seems foundation needs still more wax to encourage bees to draw comb. 

And where do you get that wax when you’re just starting out, and your bees haven’t made any? 

You buy it. 

Of course, you do. 

It comes in a bar, much like soap, and you sort of use it like a crayon to coat the foundation, being sure to get the edges and corners. 

Thus, for several years, I bought chunks of beeswax and coated our frames that way, all the while squirreling away any excess comb we scraped off frames.

Eventually, we had enough for me to melt and filter, and I was able to switch to brushing wax on the frames.  

I do this because it’s true. Waxing frames really does encourage bees to draw comb. Also, it’s a good idea to not throw wax and hive debris on the ground around your hives. I’ve heard it can attract pests like hive beetles, yellow jackets, and who knows what else?

Isn’t it better to consider that wax a resource that can be used not only to wax frames, but also make candles and natural toiletry products?

Plus, it makes the house smell good when you melt the wax. Just remember beeswax has a very low flash point. Exercise extreme caution when heating it. Also, it tends to spatter, so it can be helpful to cover your work surface with newspaper. And don’t use a pan you plan to use for anything else. Buy one at a thrift store solely for this purpose.

So, if you’re a newer beekeeper, and no one told you about waxing your frames, consider yourself told.
You’re welcome. 🙂

About 1/4 of this evening’s work completed

OH Honey, Uncranked

Today we treated all the hives with Formic Pro, a task we were not looking forward to given the general crankiness of two of them.

We’ve used NOD Global products before, first Mite Away Quick Strips (MAQS), then switching to Formic Pro. Early in our beekeeping adventures, we used MAQS following the two-strip regimen and cowered at the number of dead bees on the ground the next day. Also, we lost queens.

Both these possibilities are mentioned on the NOD website. They say, “Formic acid will initially disturb colony activities and may, within one day of application, result in queen rejection or slight increase in adult bee mortality.”

“Queen rejection” or “supercedure” is when the worker bees decide the queen is no longer doing her job properly, and they decide to raise a new one to take her place. This can be triggered by a queen’s lowered pheromone production.

Thus, it’s possible using Formic Pro or MAQS can encourage this action by masking Mother Bee’s pheromones.

Because these queen deaths happened early in our beekeeping adventures, we felt compelled to immediately run out and buy new queens, rather than let the bees requeen themselves.

Relevant to this post is the fact the bees don’t seem to like the treatment much either. As soon as we lay down the strip, the normal buzz of the hive usually rises to a dull roar, and they don’t seem to want us around.

These issues were enough to convince us to switch to the one-strip method after changing Formic Pro, MAQS no longer being readily available in our area.

There are a few downsides to using one strip, rather than two strips. First of all, this method lowers the efficacy of the product. Also, with Formic Pro, to use the one-strip option, the beekeeper puts on one strip for ten days, then removes and replaces the first strip with another for ten more days.

That’s twenty days of being unable to work our hives.

For these reasons, and because we are more comfortable with letting the hives requeen themselves, we decided to try two strips again. Letting nature take its course this way can also help with mite control by causing a break in brood rearing. No brood to feast on means no food for mites, forcing a break in mite rearing as well.

In addition, at one of the bee meetings we went to, a speaker claimed we could help prevent queen supercedure by putting in a paper towel soaked with Honey B Healthy (HBH) alongside the strips. This would seem logical because, according to their website, “HONEY B HEALTHY® helps calm honey bees when used as a spray. Spraying honey bees helps prevent fighting when combining nucs, swarms and colonies.”

It was worth a try, right? But we still weren’t looking forward to putting the strips in, especially in #2 and #2A, the two hives who seemed so defensive earlier this week.

We started at the other end.

My notes on how the procedure went read as follow:

11 June 2023 — Warm, 80, cloudy, Formic Pro treatment

LoLa – fine
#5 – fine
#4 – fine
#3 – fine
#6S – fine
#2 – fine 🙂
#2A – fine 🙂

We couldn’t believe it! Readers, I tell you, #2 and #2A were completely uncranked. It was as if the past week never happened.

I can’t explain it. Maybe it was the heat. Maybe it was the particulates from the smoke in the air. Maybe we ticked them off because we removed the excessive drone comb and brood they had on the bottoms of some of their frames.

Personally, I’m just grateful.

Because I could now get close enough to take pictures, I shot a few of OH Honey after treatment. Two hives began bearding immediately. This is another common result of treating with formic acid, but it’s interesting that it was only two hives and not necessarily the most crowded ones.

Bee logic — I’ll never understand it!

On an unrelated subject, yesterday we took Mary Rose’ (after the famous ship and the wine) for her inaugural paddle in Lake Erie, something both The Engineer and I have wanted to try since we got her. 

Being the more (possibly overly) cautious one in our partnership, I insisted on arranging for us to take a class on coastal kayaking before attempting it ourselves.

Yesterday was the day. 

Well, friends, it was amazing! The weather was beautiful, and the waves just high enough to gently rock the boat without feeling like we were in danger of going over. 

This is partly because Mary Rose’, a Perception 13.5 Tribe, is designed for calm coastal water. 

Then there was our instructor Robb, from LoCo ‘Yaks. We seemed to hit it off right away — how could we not like someone who was so encouragaing and so enthusiastic about kayaking with such a clear interest in safety? And he was interested in bees.

He demonstrated two methods of holding a paddle with a more relaxed grip, and everything clicked. Relaxing my hands and the way I paddle loosened my body, and I was able to move with the water, rather than trying to control it (which I knew was a futile endeavor but previously was unable to manage).

Robb even took a few pictures of us. Here’s one demonstrating how not to paddle a tandem kayak (apparently referred to in the industry as “divorce boats”).

We eventually got it right, as you can see below.

Mary Rose’ resting on the (litter-strewn) beach while we had a snack before venturing out again.

Kayak Joy

I’d been nervous about exploring semi-open water and — while I remain certain I’ll never be interested in whitewater or ocean kayaking — after yesterday’s excursion, I can’t wait for our next coastal exploration!

So. Many. Bees.

The apiary has been keeping us as busy as, well, bees! It seems we’ve been in at least one hive almost every day for the past two weeks.

We had a look at the supers on #1A, #2, and #2A. Considering we didn’t even go into the brood boxes, they were very cranky and super defensive.

Generally, if the guard girls are being a little overly zealous, we step back a few feet, and they go back to their hive.

Recently, this has not been the case with these three colonies. They’ve been following us right up to the door, and in one case, a guard chased Dave around the house, eventually stinging him on the neck.

Well! This is not behavior we will put up with for long, and if their behavior doesn’t improve, we’ll have to requeen.

This can be done many ways, but if we want to change the genetic traits (cranky, overly defensive) they are currently exhibiting, we have to change the genetics of the hive. Ergo, we can’t just kill the queen and let them raise a new one with eggs already in the hive because those eggs share the same genetics.

We’ll have to remove all the eggs we can find and give them eggs from a hive with, for lack of a better word, “happy” bees. We can also encourage them to use those eggs by “notching” the cells in the rows beneath, a new practice for us, but one that seems logical. By destroying the cells below the eggs, the bees have more room to make a bigger queen cell. A bigger queen cell = a bigger queen. A bigger queen = a healthier queen.

At least, that’s how it’s supposed to work. Alternatively, we could buy two mated queens at $40-$48 a pop, which would save time (but not money). 

All three hives were very full, which may have contributed to their unhappiness, and the three supers were also full of nectar being made into honey. We added second supers to each and took out the entrance reducers to provide better air circulation.

There’s a nectar flow on right now, and the foragers have certainly been earning their keep.

A few days later, we finally got a look at was #4 (the comb in a jar hive). To get bees to work in a jar requires keeping them on the verge of swarming because they generally don’t like to build comb on glass surfaces.

I’m not sure we succeeded. Given the massive amount of bees we found (see below), I think it likely the swarm we caught came from this hive. There were So Many Bees.

We’ve given them another deep box to make them a little more comfortable, although considering how crowded they were, they were surprisingly chill (unlike their westerly neighbors). Unsurprisingly, we didn’t see the queen, but all ten (ten!) frames had brood, and there was plenty of larvae and eggs as well.

That same day, we looked in LoLa whose queen’s brood laying is also in full swing. Last time we checked, we saw many queen cups on the bottom of one frame, and I was a little concerned they might be feeling a little swarmy. Adding frames with comb seems to have given them the space they needed because there were no queen cells. Apparently, they are happily making honey and raising bees, so we added a few more frames — empties this time because we’re out of deep frames with comb.

All the hives seem to also be in comb building mode, so I expect they’ll quickly fill the frames. Below is a frame with freshly made comb already filled with nectar.

Isn’t it pretty? See in the corner, where they’re just beginning to cap the honey?

Working this hive is so easy because we don’t have to open the whole hive if our tasks only involve a few frames. We simply take off the relevant slats over the frames we need to look at.

Because this colony is now so populated, we opened another of the slitted entries on the front.

We’re also experimenting by using frame feeders filled with water in two hives, and LoLa is one of them. A speaker suggested this at a beekeeping meeting we attended.

The idea is if the bees don’t have to search for water, they can expend more energy making honey. LoLa’s feeder was completely dry, so the bees are using the water, and they seem to be making a lot of honey, so maybe there’s something to the idea.

Here’s a good place to implore beekeepers out there to join a local beekeeping club if you don’t already belong to one. It’s a rare meeting where we don’t pick up some new tip or technique to try. Attending meetings and conferences has been more beneficial to our beekeeping than I can say.

And now, back to the hives.

Because our apiary is only set up for six Langstroth hives — with hive stands that fit six and winterization supplies for six — having seven plus LoLa presented a problem.

Should we consider our surplus bees a blessing, even though it would mean The Engineer having to build another hive stand, and buying yet more equipment and supplies?

Or should we find a home for one of our hives?

In the end, we chose to not only find a new home for a hive, we also decided to split that hive and include the ten-frame equipment with both new hives.

Although it might seem wasteful to give away equipment we spent money on, we’re in the process of converting to all eight frame hives, and this would move us in that direction.

We chose to split #1A, partly because it was on the end of the hive stand, making it easier to reach.

Monday night, we put the escape board between the brood boxes and the supers so we’d be able to move the honey boxes to other hives without having to brush away too many bees.

We did the split on Tuesday knowing that, despite being a new split from 20 April, the hive was well populated. As you can see below, it also had So Many Bees.

We did warn the new owners about the possible tempermant issue. One beekeeper got the queen, brood, and plenty of nurse bees and food to tide them over until they had foragers. The other got several frames of brood, including lots of eggs, some food, and almost certainly most of the foragers because it remained overnight in the location of the original #1A hive where they would have returned.

The two honey supers went on #2 and #2A, giving them each a total of three supers.

After performing the split, we took the opportunity to check #5, which was also looking a little crowded. We added a third (8-frame) brood box, and looked through the honey supers, where we found a sight that warms a beekeeper’s heart.

We took six frames of honey, replacing them with frames of comb from last year’s honey crop.

It was not a minute too soon! We’re down to about ten or twelve jars, although with the nectar flow going and the amount of uncapped honey, I hope we’ll soon have enough to extract — a sticky, messy task, but a rewarding one.

Last night we closed both split hives at dusk, grateful that the coolness of the evening meant most foragers were already home for the evening. Today, our fellow beekeepers came to pick up their hives.

Tomorrow, we will move the swarm hive (#6S) to the empty spot in our apiary.

The box on the picnic table behind the left hive stand is an empty, and the box on LoLa is an empty nuc box. 

Saturday, we are going to a training class on kayaking the Great Lakes, but Sunday we will be in the bees again, this time to treat them with Formic Pro.

Since we like to leave them alone during the process, this means we’ll have at least ten days to consider our options for the cranky hives. I’m kind of looking forward to the break. 

On a completely unrelated, here’s something I saw at a thrift store I frequent.

Yes, it is a “Wine Clutch,” where “fashion meets function” in the “ideal tote for your favorite bottle of wine or lunch on the go.” Perhaps it’s the same thing?

And worry not! The corkscrew is included!

I was tempted, but left it for another bargain-hunting wine lover. 🙂