July 2005
After a hectic June we were looking forward to a much quieter, hopefully
settled July at the Monk Avenue apiary. With the swarming season hopefully
over it wasn't till July 21st that we inspected our bees. Hive 1 is now
quite large and strong so we put a second brood chamber on it to encourage
the colony to expand. The two swarms are still quite small so they will
remain in single brood boxes until next year. Hive 2 - our one and only
hived colony still producing honey - doesn't seem to be filling the half-filled
supers which we had placed on it from the aggressive hive now at Flaxton
very quickly at the moment, so we hope catches up before September. It
is also turning out to be rather vicious so we must do something about
getting some quiet, more docile bees next year.
Our main project in July was to work out what to do with the Oil Seed
Rape (Spring flower) honey which we had extracted and decanted into plastic
buckets in June. By now it had set quite hard!
We read about, and decided to try, creamed honey.
This is a process of gently warming hard set honey and mixing it with
some soft-set honey to produce a soft spreadable product.
The end of July Dad made a heating unit from an old greenhouse heater
and some old brood boxes large enough to melt 25lbs. (1 tub of honey)
at a time without over-heating the honey.
Two empty brood boxes insulated by a blanket are gently
heated with a greenhouse heater
Inside is a 25lb tub of honey with a thermometer to ensure
it doesn't get too warm