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It’s a June honey flow in the beeyard June 1, 2020
June 6, 2020

Left to right: Jeff’s hive, Paloma3 hive, Lino hive, Far right:  Cecilio hive

The Cecilio hive looks so strong and is filled with strong capped brood. Lots of uncapped larva. This queen is busy! Many of the frames were 60% filled with honey and we only took two full frame home to harvest. It is very close to needing another box.  The next time we will bring the queen excluder and put on the third box for honey only. We did check for varroa mites and did a alcohol wash of 250 bees. (Yes, they die for the cause). Only 1 mite! This is fabulous news! We had treated last month with oxalic dribble.

The Paloma3 hive Is our new hive we got about a month ago from the club and it is amazing how strong it is. What else is amazing is how gentle those Italian bees are. It was almost as if they looked up at us and said “oh hi there! It’s you, again. We are too busy to bother with you!” They went about their work. No significant mites! We decided to add a queen excluder and the third box, also called “The Honey Super”.

The Leno hive was just amazing when I lifted off the top cover. Honey everywhere! This 8 frame box is a little too tight for nine frames so I left the end open and the bees built beautiful comb against the side of the box. (see the video I took). We decided to remove it because it would be a mess if we have to harvest it for honey. You can see Jeff cutting it away in the video.

This box was so heavy with honey and since it is early in the season we ended up taking four frames that were filled back to back 100% and we replaced them with empty ones. Because we replaced the full honey frames, this hive did not need another box. The next time we visit will bring an extra box and will leave that full box of honey for the bees and put on a queen excluder and only harvest the box on top. We did another mite check and it was successful with no visible mites in the sample. 

Jeff’s hive: Lots of brood, lots of capped honey, lots of nectar. Took two full frames from the Honey Super. Treated with an oxalic shop towel. Next time test again and put on a queen excluder.  We are heading home with 8 full frames of capped honey to harvest.  More on that later…

a full frame of capped honey!