For the past couple of days, we've experienced unseasonably cool temperatures for July in Georgia, making it much more appealing to suit up and inspect the hives this morning. I made sure there was plenty of fuel in the smoker and took an escape screen with me.
The Sweet BEEzus girls have moved up into their shallow super on top, but it looks like they are only storing pollen there so far. The Apollo bees are making honey in their top super, but very little of it is capped off.
I saved Rocky for last. Despite the smoke, these girls are feisty and they did not like it one bit when I took the cover off their hive and started poking around in the top super. The buzz was angry!
Their honey super is very heavy, and the middle frames are full of honey and mostly capped. Even though the end frames are not filled in, I decided to go ahead and insert the escape screen today (for more about how the escape screen works to separate the bees from the honey box, see http://beewaxingeloquent-helen.blogspot.com/2010/11/honey-harvest.html). I will be able to harvest this honey in a few days.
My decision was based on the sheer difficulty of being able to work with this hive. The amount of wax and propolis the girls are making have tightly sealed together not only all of the frames in the honey super, but also the inner and outer covers to the hive. It takes some muscle to pry things apart and even more finesse not to break anything!
So, honey harvest and photos coming soon. Once I've un-gummed up the works.
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You might have to take up eastern Mediterranean cooking to use all that honey creatively!!! How about some baklava -- forwarded via UPS or Fedex to your most adoring readers!!?? Looking forward to seeing the honey collection photos. You need a videographer for that [Tim??].
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