On Sunday I put the clearer board on no2 hive after having inspected all 6 in the Apiary. Took off the super, replacing it with an empty one on Monday. Put the clearer on no1 hive and harvested the super on Tuesday, again giving an empty super.
I extracted the honey from both supers and left the honey to stand in settling buckets. Washed out the extractor and filter with very hot water to melt the wax residues and left the resulting liquid in a covered bucket to allow the wax to form a cake and set so it can be used to make beeswax polish.
Wednesday afternoon I took the extractor over to loan to a newish beekeeper a few miles away. When I arrived we suited up and went to look at her hives. Consternation - I recognised the boxes as some I had been offered a while ago but declined as they were inaccurately made, solid floors to compound the problems. She has two swarms in nucs, both were healthy and expanding, one outgrowing the box so advised transferring to a full size brood with dummy boards to permit further growth and assess further with regard to winter in a few weeks.
The National hives were busy with fully open entrances but wasps investigations being carried out. We looked in the calmer hive and found the brood box full of healthy bees, a very small number of chalk brood mummies. The super being drawn but no honey yet. I doubt there will be a crop from that hive but it should be ok to go into winter. I spotted the unmarked queen so we marked her using a crown of thorns in the process. There was significant brace comb and propolis, which I felt was due to the lack of precision in box building. Apparently the price was right so replacement or alteration isn't a major loss. We also two handed moved the hive onto a new masonry stand a couple of feet in front of original position.
The other National hive was said to be more defensive but today I found them quite easily manipulated. Again the dimensional inaccuracies resulted in brace comb and propolis. the super on this hive held 7 1/2 frames of capped honey. As the brood box was fully drawn with plenty of stores we harvested the super, brushing bees off with a goose wing and putting the cleared frames into an empty box, covered with a tea towel. The brace comb we removed and it will be melted to make polish. This hive was also moved forward onto a masonry stand.
I gave advice about the importance of bee space and frame spacing plus advised how much better it would be to have omf floors, then we closed up the hives fitted entrance restrictors to allow the bees to defend against wasps and took the full super frames into the house.
We drank tea then I demonstrated scratching off cappings, loading the frames into extractor and the process of keeping correct spin speed, turning the frame so the inside face became outside and spinning again etc. Having got the process started I left the work in progress.
I extracted the honey from both supers and left the honey to stand in settling buckets. Washed out the extractor and filter with very hot water to melt the wax residues and left the resulting liquid in a covered bucket to allow the wax to form a cake and set so it can be used to make beeswax polish.
Wednesday afternoon I took the extractor over to loan to a newish beekeeper a few miles away. When I arrived we suited up and went to look at her hives. Consternation - I recognised the boxes as some I had been offered a while ago but declined as they were inaccurately made, solid floors to compound the problems. She has two swarms in nucs, both were healthy and expanding, one outgrowing the box so advised transferring to a full size brood with dummy boards to permit further growth and assess further with regard to winter in a few weeks.
The National hives were busy with fully open entrances but wasps investigations being carried out. We looked in the calmer hive and found the brood box full of healthy bees, a very small number of chalk brood mummies. The super being drawn but no honey yet. I doubt there will be a crop from that hive but it should be ok to go into winter. I spotted the unmarked queen so we marked her using a crown of thorns in the process. There was significant brace comb and propolis, which I felt was due to the lack of precision in box building. Apparently the price was right so replacement or alteration isn't a major loss. We also two handed moved the hive onto a new masonry stand a couple of feet in front of original position.
The other National hive was said to be more defensive but today I found them quite easily manipulated. Again the dimensional inaccuracies resulted in brace comb and propolis. the super on this hive held 7 1/2 frames of capped honey. As the brood box was fully drawn with plenty of stores we harvested the super, brushing bees off with a goose wing and putting the cleared frames into an empty box, covered with a tea towel. The brace comb we removed and it will be melted to make polish. This hive was also moved forward onto a masonry stand.
I gave advice about the importance of bee space and frame spacing plus advised how much better it would be to have omf floors, then we closed up the hives fitted entrance restrictors to allow the bees to defend against wasps and took the full super frames into the house.
We drank tea then I demonstrated scratching off cappings, loading the frames into extractor and the process of keeping correct spin speed, turning the frame so the inside face became outside and spinning again etc. Having got the process started I left the work in progress.
