Well I have been very remiss about keeping up to date with the bees comings and goings and much has been going on.
I harvested the first batch of honey which was very satisfying. The girls have been working their little socks off and filled 2 supers so I headed off to Mum who has an extractor.
The comb.
In the extractor having been spun.
Honey and the odd bit of wax draining out the bottom.
And the finished product (well one of the 45lbs of honey they made!).
(already tucked into that jar!)
Then we checked my Mum's bees and a nucleus of bees she had started earlier this year had really filled the box they were in and needed moving on but no spare hive so they came to leave with me as I have a back up hive.
I'm rapidly discovering that bees are a bit like ducks and chickens. You say that you are only going to have the 1 and think about more in a couple of years if all goes well and 8 weeks later the second colony in settled in and more on the way!
And that brings me onto the more on the way. Two colonies is really all I think I can comfortably accommodate although could manage 3 spacewise at a push so when Mum ended up with another colony that needed to move up into a hive I didn't hesitate to offer her my new backup hive. Was assured that the swarming season is winding down and haven't seen much in the way of queen cells anyway, so off it goes.
Was sitting with my bees listening to them going around their business yesterday and heard my queen piping. Don't really know much about this but my book says this about it - "Queen bees often make a 'piping' noise - variously described as a quacking or tooting noise of a toy trumpet. It can be clearly heard outside the hive and has been said to be either G# or A in pitch." Thought I would ask Mum about it and have a little google to find out that it is usually made by virgin queens or mated queens in a hive with a virgin queen or queen cell close to hatching! I thought she was just chatting back to me!
Mum has never heard it and nor has her bee mentor who has kept bees for 50 years! The general opinion is that I probably have another queen in the hive somewhere and need to find her and set her up on her own!
Hmmm. Not sure how I will find her and set her up before the queen finds her and they fight and am still kind of hoping that I am just hearing things or she is just a chatty queen.
If I'm hearing things I will be the first pychotic who's internal voices speak bee!