August 2004
August is the month when we start preparing all the colonies for the end
of the honey-making season; we need to see how much honey we have already
collected from the hives, removing any full frames from the supers to
make the bees concentrate on filling any partially filled frames before
the end of the season. It is unlikely that any of the hives will swarm
after this month so we stopped the disruptive weekly brood\colony inspections
so the bees can settle down for the Winter.
In mid August Paul, John and Dad put some clearer boards on the active
hives and on the following Saturday - Saturday 21st August we removed
all the fully capped frames of honey from the supers, leaving any partially
filled frames for the bees to fill and cap completely.
Clearer board at the ready (Note the one way bee escapes)
Clearer
board in place. The bees will move down into the hive but cannot get back
up. Leaving us to pinch the honey.
But the bees smelled the honey! Some of them followed us all the way back
up the garden to the garage! We had to cover all the garage windows with
black plastic sheeting so they would fly to the light but it was still
quite a long and difficult job getting them out! The next step is to plan
a good date to remove the last of the honey harvest in early September.
The last few weeks of August have proved to be some of the wettest on
record so I doubt if the bees have been foraging very much lately - we
shall have to wait and see....