Dog days

July and August are slow months for beekeeping, and I expect they'll be slower months for the blog as well. All my favorite bee blogs (including this one) are also quiet these days.

The bees have established themselves in their hives and really don't need tending until later in the summer or early fall, when it will be time to treat them for mites and help them prepare for winter. It's actually better to leave them be (bee?) except for a hive inspection every 10-14 days.

Today was day 14, however, and I was excited to take a look at what's been happening. Droogie 1, by far my better hive, is 4 boxes tall. The top box has three of the ten frames fully drawn out with wax, and two of those frames are being filled with honey. The third box is almost full of honey, some of it beginning to be capped! This is great news, because I think I'll be able to take some of this and still leave them with enough to last them through winter. The first and second box are filled with bees and there is lots of evidence of a healthy, busy queen (eggs, larva, capped brood).

Here is a picture of a frame that has capped honey, and below that is one filled with honey but hasn't yet been capped (The bees dehydrate the nectar until it has the appropriate water content, which we call honey, at which time the cover the cell with wax). I'm thrilled that I'll be able to harvest some honey this year- I was dubious for a while.





Droogie 2 remains a laggard, and for some reason the bees have ignored four or five frames in each of the three boxes. I saw some eggs and so I know the queen is there and doing fine, but this hive just doesn't seem to be thriving. Unless they pick it up, I'll have to move drawn frames from the upper boxes down to the bottom boxes for winter, and I doubt I'll be taking any honey from this hive.