Liquid Gold

Last night I took a frame of honey out of the Belle hive. I wanted to send some honey home with my friend Ron, who is off to a holiday at his family's cabin on a lake. A bee got caught in my hair and stung me on the scalp! Yow-ee, it really hurts!

So, then we had to get the honey out of the honey comb. It's quite a challenge! I heated up a knife and started to cut the cappings off, and the honey spilled out, so Ron scooped it out with a spoon. It was quite tedious, and lots of bits of beeswax ended up in the honey. Then I thought that we could scoop the wax and honey into cheesecloth, and squish the honey into the jar. It worked well, but honey oozed all over. I got Ron to pull out a plastic bag, cut the corner off, and I thought I'd put the cheesecloth in the bag, then put in the honey comb, and squeeze that into the jar. Its a brilliant idea, and would have worked, except I lost control of the cheesecloth, and the mixture poured out of the bottom, all over the counter, then into the jar, without being filtered, so we were back at square one!

Hours later, there was honey all over us, the counter, the sink, inside the jar, outside the jar, and dripping onto the floor. I sent Ron off with a jar that looked like 60% beewax and 40% honey. I told him he could deal with it at the cabin. He thought it would be a good story to tell his family!

They honey is amber colored, fragrant and floral. It's the best tasting honey ever!

This wasn't the first frame of honey to come out of the Belle hive. The first honey came out last weekend and I gave it to my host family. They too, struggled with getting the honey out of the comb. Today, she came over with a little dish of spiced almonds that she made with the honey! They were really good, so I ate them all for lunch.

I purchased a commerical honey extractor - used - from another beekeeper. I need to figure out how to repair and clean it, but it will be so much easier to use. It works on centrifugal force to extract the honey, and doesn't damage the comb, so the frames can go back into the hive.

Introducing Sophia and Belle

I'm happy to report that my weak hive is making a come back. I went over to see how they were doing yesterday, and saw some good things. There were about 4 frames of bees, stores of pollen and honey, the queen is still laying, and they had eaten the whole pollen patty and drunk the sugar syrup dry. Plus, they looked a little more active. It was interesting to notice that I now have two different colored bees in the hive. The original bees are golden/orange colored, while the bees that have hatched from the frame I brought over are much darker. It's really obvious - I will try to get a picture the next time I open the hive.

I have been having a hard time describing which hive I've been writing about, so have decided to name them, to make it easier. My first hive was given it's name last month by our host. So the Sophia hive is my first one - the package - and the one that needed rescuing.

My second hive came from the nuc, and I have decided to call it the Belle hive. The picture above is Belle.

Her Majesty the Queen

(Click on a picture for a close-up view)

We took a bunch of great pictures today when we opened up the hive. We found the queen in the 'nuc' hive today. Can you see her? She is in the center of the frame of the first picture, much longer than the other bees, and almost completely black. She was dipping her rear end into the cells to lay eggs. You can see how white the comb is - it was just built fresh on a frame with plastic foundation. The bees have not lined the inside of the comb with propolis yet, but the queen is laying it it anyways.

The second picture is a great example of a typical frame inside a hive. At the top of the frame the cells have been capped over - there will be baby bees in the pupa stage growing inside. Right beside them, if you look close inside each cell, you can see little white grubs curled inside. This is a baby bee in the larva stage. This larva is mature, and is being capped over. Along the bottom of the picture, it's hard to see what's inside the cells, but I saw smaller larva covered with royal jelly. You can see a bee in the bottom right corner that has dived into the cell. Just her bottom is sticking out. The worker bees secrete royal jelly from a gland in their heads, so this one is probably feeding the larva. The eggs hatch into larva within 3 days, get fed royal jelly for 5 days, then get capped over. Two weeks later - new bees!

The third picture is a frame that I put in the hive with no foundation. I had read on the internet that the bees would naturally build comb on an empty frame - plastic foundation is not necessary. In addition, the plastic foundation forces the bees to build comb that is a fraction larger than what is 'normal' for them. So I put the empty frame in to see what would happen. Instead of the smaller comb I expected, the bees built a beautifully straight frame with noticeably larger comb, and rounder, rather than the octagonal shape! Today, I saw that they used this whole frame to raise drone bees. The drones are the male bees. They are larger, so the comb is built larger, and when the cells are capped over, the cappings are raised like a bullet, to give the drone room to grow. They take an extra 3 days longer to hatch than the worker bees. If you look closely at the top of the picture where it's out of focus, just right of centre, there is a drone bee emerging from it's cell. It looks bigger than the worker bees, and the eyes on a drone are huge - they take up his whole head. I'll try and get a better picture later, to compare a drone with a worker bee.

The last picture is... HONEY!

Other people's adoption news

I don't have any developments regarding my own adoption, but there has been news in the rest of the community. Close friends of mine got back from China with their daughter last week. I met them at the airport, and also got a chance to play with the baby a couple of days later. I get so emotional everytime I think about them. We started our adoption processes about the same time, and here they are - a family. I'm next!

Another family (not from my agency) received their proposal a day or two before the Mom's birthday. What a great birthday present! I hope that will happen for me too.

Within our agency, one family will be travelling this month to bring a daughter home. Another Mom in our group could get her proposal any day now. I keep thinking I'll call and ask how it's going, but I hesitate - I'm sure the question gets tiring when she doesn't have anything to tell... I know she will call when she has news.

The rest of us - just wait...

Baby bee

I went to my nuc hive one evening this week to take out a frame of brood for the other hive. After brushing off the bees, I took a look at what was on the frame. One side was just about empty - lots of bees have hatched since Sunday. But the other side had capped brood, honey and pollen. While I was watching, I saw a bee poking her little antenna out of a capped cell! I watched while it poked through the cap, and struggled to emerge. In about a minute, it pulled itself out of the cell, and started to wander over the frame.

I felt so sorry for it. Most baby bees would have a frame full of adult bees to care for it. She would be fed right away, and probably put to work. The first week of her life, she would feed the larva and the queen, and do a bit of cleaning. The next week, she would build comb, cap cells over growing larva, process nectar into honey, and continue cleaning the hive. Only after the first two weeks would she venture out of the hive, learn to fly, then start foraging for nectar, pollen, propolis and water. Worker bees live for about 45 days during the summer. They are very busy for their short lives.

I'm not sure whether my baby bee survived or not. We took her back to the hive. I hope she made it.