A Pillow for Baby Boy

A friend gave me a small piece of fabric - kinda crazy looking fabric - a cat in a submarine with a polka dot octopus!  I made the cutest pillow for Baby Boy and he just loves it!

Hive #5

I checked Hive #5 today and they were lost to wax moths.  When I checked 7/25/11 they did not have a queen and even though I put 3 frames with good brood in the hive, it just wasn't enough. 
The weather has been so hot and we haven't had much rain.  We did get 2 inches this weekend so that will help everything and today is a little cooler.

Honey Production 2011

It has been a great year for honey at my house - 72 pints, 22 half pints and 6 quarts with comb.

Checking Bees and Hot Weather

We're in a record breaking heat wave - 5 days of temps over 100 - trust me, it feels like it's more.
I haven't checked the bees so this morning I thought the heat was reasonable - better than the last couple of days. 
Hive #5 is struggling - I did not see any indication of a queen and I saw the queen on 6/16/11.  Don't know what has happened.  Moved 3 frames with brood from #6 and Nuc #3.  Not sure if they will make a queen but it's worth trying.
Nuc #3, Nuc #4 and #6 all looked good - lots of bees and even saw some pollen being brought in.
The bees were a little testy and I was very, very hot by the time I finished.  Did not check the bigger hives - I'll save that for cooler weather. 

Service Flag Quilt

HAPPY FOURTH OF JULY

One of my favorite quilts - this quilt was featured in the October 2005 issue of McCall's Quilting.

Service flags were first displayed during World War I - originally designed by WWI Army Captain Robert L. Queissner, 5th Ohio Infantry, in honor if his two sons who served in the war - they came to symbolize the hopes of every family who has a loved one in active duty.

Each blue star on a Service Flag represents a family member serving in the Armed Forces.

www.bluestarmothers.org

The Beeyard - July, 2011

Late this afternoon, I put away the empty supers from extracting honey last week. I checked Hive#4 and they still had some space. Added super to Nuc #5 with 7 empty frames and 3 full frames of honey from Nuc #4.

Nuc #4 needed some space.

I'll probably do some more rearranging later next week. I need to check #6 for a queen. I could do some more extracting and take more honey - we'll see.

Extracting Honey

Sunday was honey extracting day!

I started with the Swarm Hive and had to use a ladder for getting the top two supers off - don't want to do that again. There were 6 supers and two deeps on this hive. But in looking thru the hive I found all the supers were not completely full - so I took a total of 3 supers (30 frames) off this hive. I moved the bottom super between the deeps - it had some brood and I was concerned about the queen moving up. That left two supers with honey for the bees.

That was a good start for the morning and the bees were calm and not so horribly hot.

So the extracting went good and I decided to take the honey from from Nuc #1 and Hive #4 - this was mid-afternoon. The bees were testy and it was VERY HOT! No stings but just irritated bees - not the best plan but it's done - the morning is definitely better. The other hives will be left alone - they need what they have for this hot summer and the winter months to come.

Hive #4 - took off 1 super with 9 frames.

Nuc #1 - took 4 frames and 9 frames from this hive.

So the total for the day was 52 frames - it was a lot of honey - about 3-five gallon buckets waiting to be put in jars.

I did check all the hives - Hive #6 that was queenless has lots of brood but I took off the second deep, left a full super of honey and they should be fine. They had not filled anything in the second deep and they just don't need the stress of trying to fill the space, the hot weather with no rain and no nectar flow. I will check for the queen - got to figure out the dates.

Hive #4 probably needs some empty supers - I may put an empty super on this hive when they get finished cleaning them up.

The small hives all looked fine. So my original plan had been to do this is two days but I got a little carried away and tried to do everything in one. Clean up is always more time consuming than you think. And I could have taken two more supers (about 20 frames) if I hadn't gotten carried away. But the bees need the honey more than me and I can do some more later.