Super Duper honey time

Some of you may be wondering what is going on with the bees - this is Honey and Horseshoes, anyways. Well, throughout the summer, beekeeping is mostly hands-off. We spend most of our time with the bees- just poking around and making sure they are all still in the hives and haven't swarmed off.

We have noticed a huge difference in this year's hives versus last years. The number of bees, alone, is a stark contrast. After we placed last year's colony in the hives we hadn't noticed much of an increase in the number of bees flying around. Now, with our swarm and Georgia bees (the colony that was store-bought, happened to come from Georgia), we have noticed a huge jump in the number of bees and the amount of activity around the hive.

When we pull frames from the hive body to inspect for the queen and baby bees, there are so many workers and nurse bees around that we can barely see the wax foundation.

A swarm bee checking out the painted flower on his hive.

This weekend was the perfect time to place our honey supers. We know our busy bees have established and they don't look like they are going anywhere, so to keep them happy we are putting the honey supers on top of the hive body boxes.

The honey supers give the bees room to store just honey. We place what is called a queen excluder between the hive bodies and the supers. This keeps her down below in the regular frames and will prevent her from laying eggs in the top boxes, thus making them only honey. In a few weeks we will add another honey super - making our hive four boxes tall. We could probably add a third super, as well, if our bees are able to keep producing honey with a late fall bloom.

The prospect of harvesting a solid 50-100 pounds of honey is very real this year. And that is taking into account the super or two we will leave on the hive for the bees to eat all winter. Place your orders now!