A Message from the Honey Labs CEO

Beekeeper Earl,

I watched you working with the hive tonight and I must say you are very amuzing. These bee's have more contraptions than a cat. Over the past few months I have watched you feed the bees sugar, fake pollen and tonight I saw you add beattle traps to the hive. I must say I was rather dissapointed when you tried to place the honey super on the lumber supports. Even a simple yellow lab like myself, could have told you that was a bad idea. After seeing you struggle to regain control of the leaning honey super, I laughed as the bees really got mad and where just bouncing off your mask. No telling how swollen you would have been without the mask. I assume you now agree that it was a bad idea to try and place the super on the wood supports. I hope you will rember this lesson and only place the supers on flat surfaces.

Sally
CEO
Honey Labs LLC.

P.S. I saw this cartoon and thought of you.

Saw the Queen today

This morning I doned the Homer suit and paid the hive a visit. After exchanging emails with NJEB over the past 10 days, I decided to start feeding the bees again. Last week I placed the top feeder on the stack, and all of the syrup was gone. Although the bees have eight deep frames of honey, I dont want to under feed the bees. Since I am not bottling the honey, I really dont mind if they taker any of the sugar water and store it on the frames - just want the hive to survive through the winter. In addition to feeding them for the winter, the sugar syrup will help them produce wax for the new brood frames that I added.

I did pull two of the honey frames, as I was curious if the bees had started eating their surplus. I saw no indication that anything had been eaten, looks like they are still storing food. I am certain that whn you check the honey stores, it causes the bees to become aggressive. The hive became very aggressive when I was checking honey stores.

Brood Chambers - The brood chambers look good. I saw indications that the bees had started to repair the comb on the new frames that I added last week. The frames had old comb on them, put in several areas, the comb was either damaged or had been scraped away. While checking the upper brood chamber, I did see the queen. This was the first time that I have seen the queen. I was especially impressed with myself,as I was trying to find the queen and was able to locate her.

Overall everything was good today - saw the queen, saw stored food, and I didnt get stung. As NJEB can attest, getting stung really takes some enjoyment out of being a beekeepr.

Moving Day

Regardless if your an adult, child or honey bee moving day is never easy. I havent made a big move in a very long time but I can recall the anxiety. I think the bees where rather anxious as they really started buzzing during the move. I might as well be a native of Charlotte I have been here so long, but prior to arriving in Charlotte I moved plenty. Being rather canid with the bee blog reader, Karen and I have been putting some thought (nothing to serious) to the topic of moving as we both have a love hate relationship with Charlotte. But onto the bees...

To start the my face has returned to normal size and shape. On Monday afternoon I had a rouge bee sting me on the tip of my nose. My face swelled like I took a punch from Mike Tyson. I wasnt even near the hive, I was working on the house. The Brushy Mountain order arrived this weeks, so I was able to assemble some new equipment and move the bees. I had to order a deep super as all of my orginal equipment was medium. The bees have some more room as I added a second medium super (additional four frames) and installed the new deep super for their honey. Moving frames from one hive to another really got the bees worked up. They really got worked up when I was moving the honey frames. Since the equipment that I bought from Libby was a 10 fram setup but only had 9 frames installed - I had to remove one honey super. I was able to find one that didnt have that much stored on it. I was very happy to be in the full Homer Simpson suit today. The additional space should work well fro the bees as I feel the hive was getting a little crowded. Additionally the new top screen, isnt covered with wax so they should not beard in these warm fall days. When winter arrive, I will use my solid winter top cover.

Weather is good - low humidity weather upper 80's when I checked the hive.

Non Bee items:
1. Its race weekend for Karen, Bee Keeper Kathy and Rebecca they are racing the White Lake triathlon on Saturday then heading to Beekeeper Kathy's beach house for a nice weekend. Hope they all have a good race and enjoy their time at the beach.
2. Good college football weekend. Sooners need to play better than they did last week against Fla. State if they are going to win.
3. I caugtht the last 20 minutes of President Obama's press conference today - hell might be freezing over as I liked what he had to say and wish he and all politician would take the candid approach he took in his press conference toady.

W.C. Fields and the South Carolina Thugs

The past three days, there has been a lone bee buzzing around our grill and backdoor. This afternoon, I am doing a fun holiday weekend chore of replacing some rotten eves on the house and this thugs starts buzzing around. Being a beekeeper I am trying to be calm, and keep telling myself I am not near the hive, the bee doesnt feel threatned so he isnt going to bother me. I am really hoping I am right in this though since I have a nail gun, a piece of wood and I am on a ladder. The bee keeps coming and going as I am working on the house. As I am putting away my tools, this @#$%#* bee decides to sting me on the tip of my nose. So no my nose is as red and swollen as W.C. Fields. The previous stings didnt make me mad, this is so annoying - I am so happy that little thug died after she stung me.

A Ton of Honey and an encounter with Paula

I checked on the hive today. The hive looks good, they have stored a lot of honey. Although it is tempting to harvest a little, I am going to leave all of the honey for the hive. They will eat the honey through the winter.

Everything looked good. The hive became excited when I entered the lower chamber and really started flying around.

I will purchase some new equipment later today, as the the top screen has a lot of wax build up, and there is some cracked wood on the chamber.

I am very pleased with how the hive looked, we did have a little dog vs bee encounter today. As one of the bees, stung Paula (my black lab) on the ear. In fairness to the bee, I must tell you that Paula was trying to eat the bee. The bee had made her way to the screened porch and Paula was intrigued by the flying bee and started chomping at the bee. Hopefully Paula has learned her lesson.

Great weather - low humidty and mid 80's .