Christmas Bees

Only a couple days ago the bees were out and about for a "warmer weather than usual" flight. Today they are clustered in their hives, shivering and eating honey, staying warm together.

Creamed Honey

Had an interesting accidental discovery this fall. A friend had a beehive that died. She took her honey frames from that hive and put them in the freezer for over a year. Then we offered to process her honey (with the help of a class of students learning about beekeeping). Gave her most of the honey back, but kept the cappings honey, which is pictured above.

The honey was a bit of a mess, as the comb was brittle after freezing, and the honey was not warm enough to process easily. It was thick, very dark honey from the start.

The honey did not stay liquid, but instead solidified into an almost jelly-like consistency. Great for spreading on bread. Tastes like honey, but a different consistency. We used a spoon today to move the creamed honey from the bottling bucket to these mason jars.

Creamed honey is a product in which the honey has been carefully manipulated (usually) to produce very fine crystalization. We just lucked into it. Creamed honey is usually almost white, but since this was incredibly dark honey at the start, ours is this pretty golden color.

A fun, spreadible accident in honey processing.

More on creamed honey.

Moving Bees and Chickens

How hard can it be to move a hive a few feet across the yard?

Harder than one might think. If you move bees more than three miles, you can put them wherever you want. If you move them less than three miles, you can't move them more than a few feet a day, or they can't find their hive again.

As we move into some new projects in the yard, it has become necessary to move the hive. In order to move their heavy selves a few feet a day, the bees have been relocated to a cart so that they can inch their way from location A to location B.

Patience and equipment.


Oddly, chickens are also a pain to move. Past experience has shown that if we carry the little coop from the yard to the garden, the chickens will dance along merrily behind us, go in the coop and eat a snack, and then at bedtime return to the original location and circle in increasing panic because they can't find their bed.

Having had to catch the chickens after past moves, the people have gotten smarter. Someone needed to. We now move the coop and then throw snacks in there close to bedtime. When the chickens go after the snack, we slam the door shut before they can wander off in search of the "lost" coop.

Arts and Crafts Fesival at the Arboretum

We ran an exhibit last weekend at the Arts and Crafts Festival at the Arboretum. The observation hive, above, was the huge hit and crowd pleaser. Folks of all ages peered through the glass trying to find the queen bee.


The lattice poster display was awesome but dangerous. When the wind picked up later in the afternoon on Saturday, it turned into a human scale fly-swatter. No one was squished, but we had a close call.
I'm also a fan of fake beekeeper man. Except when you have to move him. He is a heavy dude. He's next to the Buncombe County Bee Club's small honey extractor.

It was fun to run the booth. There were lots of questions, again from folks of all ages. I think we converted another couple innocent people into future beekeepers.

The August Honey Harvest

We took the super off the hive on the right (the previously weaker hive, also known as the combined several times hive) on 8/7, and spun out four frames of honey with our young apprentice beekeepers.

Harvesting is a great time for friends to come and play.

Even more fun can be had on bottling day (8/8), when you can pull out some jars from previous harvests and have taste tests of the varied vintages.

Yesterday we (the original two beekeepers) took the supers off the left hive (the stronger hive at the beginning of the summer...also known as the hive we started from a nuc in 2009), and also harvested four frames of honey from that hive.

We've left both hives with two deeps and one super full of honey and nectar. There are a couple supers on the party porch with varied stages of uncapped nectar that the bees are cleaning out prior to storage for the winter in the garage.

Sticky Board Test

We just attended the short course at the Eastern Apicultural Society Conference in Boone, NC. We came home with several plans of action...one of which was to test our bees regularly for varroa mites. The sticky board test is one of the easier methods, especially with our hive design.

I gooped a bunch of petroleum jelly on a sticky board, and then we stuck the boards in the bottom of the hives for 24 hours.


This ended up being a five person project as good friends were visiting. After 24 hours we all peered together at the boards and counted the tiny mites. You can see them with the naked eye, but it is easier with a magnifying glass. The good news...both hives had a low enough count that no treatment is needed right now. We plan to do a monthly check.

The bad news...I'm starting to find small hive beetles in the hives, one here and there. When I took the sticky board off the smaller hive, there were three beetles on the board skuttling around. Time to research small hive beetles.

Exploring the Bottom Deep

We wanted to check back in on the tall hive (formerly our stronger hive, now our weaker hive on the left....the hive that was started in spring '09 from a nuc). We had looked in the supers and in the top deep, but were wondering if the bottom deep was empty, as sometimes happens as the bees move up.

Having found brood and the queen in the top deep last week, we had no idea what was going in down below.

Today we took off the supers and covered them with a towel to keep them calm and prevent robbing. Then we took off the top deep and put it off to another side, also with a towel.

The bees were a little pissy because it was thundering and about to rain, but no one got stung.

We found frames of honey and pollen in the bottom deep. We decided to switch out the deeps so the brood was below and the honey was up top. Not sure if that was called for or not, but it seemed a good idea at the time.

The frame pictured up top is from the bottom deep. You can see honey, some of it capped and both workers and drones, back in the hive to avoid bad weather.

The safety reminder of the day...always make sure your jacket and hood are completely zipped. I had a girl walking around on my zipper heads trying to find her way in today. Had I left even a small gap, she would have gone straight for my throat. Eep.