September 2000
Paul steals some Honey in the Dead of Night!
September is usually one of the busiest months of the year for apiarists, the month when the honey is harvested.
The first stage in this process is to separate the bees from the honey. On Saturday 9th September we placed clearer boards between each honey super and brood box in the hive. These boards have two oval holes with "bee escapes" in them. Bee escapes are hinged "one way" gates which allow bees to leave the super to join the main colony but not return.
The
"clearer" board with two bee escapes in place
Hives
opened-up and queen excluder replaced by a clearer board
Checking the hives after a few days we found the honey supers were now clear of bees so were able to remove the full frames from the hive. We removed the full supers after dark on Wednesday, 13th September (this job can be done after dark as the bees won't be flying) and took the full frames away.
Paul
creeps up to the bees
Carefully removes the super full of honey witout disturbing the bees
And
sneaks away with the honey
The Booty......
These frames were brought indoors to be stored where the bees couldn't smell the honey and come to collect it.
So now that we have "stolen" some honey from the bees we must replace it with something else to help them through the Winter. To do this, we prepared a sugar syrup solution - 2 pounds sugar to 1 pint water - which we poured into tin feeders which we placed on top of the clearer boards in the hives on 16th and 17th September.
A
feeder on Hive no1
While we had the hives open we also added some Bayvoral strips to keep
the dreaded Varroa mite at bay. During the rest of September we made sure
that the feeders were kept topped up giving the bees plenty of sugar in
return for the honey we had taken away. This was quite a tricky job as
Paul had escaped on a ten day holiday, leaving John and Dad in charge!
Another
on Hive No2
By the end of September, the bees were well fed and ready for Winter. Now, what shall we do with the honey we have collected?