Ambrosium inspection. Ouch!

The good news is that the upper body is fully loaded and quite heavy.

The bad news is that there is still no drawn comb in the lower body.

I think I may swap frames between the upper and lower bodies.

Also, they need more food.

And I got stung, twice! Once through my nitrile glove on my right thumb, and once through my socks on my left ankle. Relatively high on the pain scale, in my experience.

Four more pounds of sugar

For the Ambrosium. $2.39.

Josephium Harvest

We pulled the honey super off of the Josephium today. Joachim, Eric, and Karen came over at about 2. I had forgotten to put in the escape board, and put it in around 11 a.m. Late, but better than never.

Joachim and I went out with

1. a telescoping top, which we used as a tray to hold the super, 
2. a crown cover, 
3. a bucket lid to put over the hole in the crown cover, 
4. the hive tool and brush, 
5. and an empty medium super.

I took off the full super from above the escape board and Joachim smoked it. Then he retreated a brief distance where our empty super sat on the telescoping "top". I extracted the frames one at a time and brushed them off and handed them to Joachim, who re-smoked them and put them into his super. After we got all of the frames into the new super, we carried the heavy load into the sun room.

Karen, Eric, and Joachim started crushing the comb into some cookie trays. The apiaria assisted. We used

1. three cookie trays,
2. three metal spatulas,
3. a potato smasher, for crushing the comb,
4. a step stool to rest the five-gallon strainer and bottler on,
5. a toolbox to sit on,
6. a metal plate on the floor to catch drippings,
7. a case of bottles, which needed rinsing,
8. and lids

We bottled sixteen half-pounders right off the bat. The apiaria bottled a 17th a little while later. There are still a few pounds left in the extractor, which we will let drain over the next few days.

Not a bad haul for one medium super. I just wish we had gotten some supers from the Benedictium. 

More Lip Balm

The apiaria and I made a double batch of lip balm this morning. She picked some egg-nog flavoring to put in it, a truly inspired choice. It was delicious!

I measured the weight, minus a tare of 10 dry tubes and 10 caps, of 10 filed tubes and got 1 ounce 6 drams plus or minus 1 dram, so each tube has at least 0.16 ounces of product in it.

More food for the Ambrosium

I checked on the Ambrosium yesterday, and the bees had drunk all their feed. I made four more pounds of sugar into a gallon of syrup and put it in. $2.39.

No drawn comb yet in the new, lower body. There were at least some visible honey stores, uncapped, in the old, upper body.

I saw lots of activity at all the hives this morning, with pollen going into all three.

I noticed that my new, lower super on the Josephium was a deep. Oops! I opened it up and saw that the frames in it all had burr comb hanging off their bottoms. I cut it all off and put the cut combs into an attic. There was very little in the frames proper, and what little was in the burr comb seemed to be brood.

Food for the Ambrosium

Based on what I felt earlier today, I put four more pounds of sugar in an attic for the Ambrosium. $2.39.

Bodying

Looking at the Ambrosium today, I determined that its body now has about seven and a half frames of honey and brood, so I placed another body below the first one. When moving the first body up, it seemed really light. I think it may be time to feed some more.