More thymol

We placed another dose of thymol in each of the hives tonight.

The robbing seems to have stopped.

I put a feed bucket into each hive, four pounds of sugar and two pints of water in each bucket. I flipped the inner covers over to discourage robbing.

Still robbing

Today, the bees were still robbing. I moved one empty frame which still had plenty of bees on it away from the hives. Brenda stuffed the entrance of both hives with grass. That was this morning.

We went out this evening and saw a wad of bees at the Benedictium's small upper entrance. The bees in the wad were clearly too stuffed to fly. I wonder whether they are thinking of swarming?

Robbing

We placed our empty frames out in the orchard for the bees to clean off. This may have been a mistake. An hour later we saw a lot of excitement at the hives. Was it robbing? I placed a couple of slats in front of the entrance of the Valentinium, our weaker hive, to see whether that would help.

Our frames over in the orchard were licked spotless.

Extraction

We don't have access to a honey house right now, so we are working in our kitchen.

We tried the salad spinner, the potato ricer, and the food mill. They all did the job, but they also left small flakes of wax suspended in the honey.

We also placed a colander over a bucket, and lined the colander with cheese cloth. The honey was beautiful and relatively wax free. It is a slow process, however, and it will take hours to finish.

Harvest

We pulled the supers off the hives today. Joachim came over to help.

We started with the Benedictium. The top super was laden with honey, no brood, very nice. The lower super was empty, and we removed it. We sandwiched the laden super between two jerry-rigged telescoping covers. They had a few bees in them, but not many. We left the empty super in front of the Benectium for the bees to clean. We inserted four bits of a thymol package between the two brood chambers and took the laden super inside for extraction. Then we let them cool off for an hour or so. The honey was very dark and very tasty.

Then we went out to pull off the Valentinium's super. Not much honey there, but a fair amount of uncapped nectar. We left some of the emptier frames out for the bees to clean, and took a few in, probably too many. We left the remaining four bits of the thymol package between the two chambers. I think many of the frames which we brought in were of uncapped nectar. Unfortunately, while I was monkeying around with the thymol, I neglected to cover the frames, and so we picked up quite a few bees and yellow jackets. I guess we'll get to swat them later during the extraction. What a drag.

But we now have honey in our house!

Dead bees

There were a bunch of dead bees on the landing of the Valentinium this morning. I commonly see a dead bee or two on the landing. That's where their sisters toss their corpses. But this was eight or ten, and some where still twitching.

Robbers? Guard bees killed by yellow jackets? They did not look like drones. A plague?

I went back out to take a picture, but they were gone.

Walking back down the path I saw a pair of crickets, one of which had clearly been stepped on, and was dead. The other cricket was staying with it. It ran away when I approached, and then came back out to stay with its dead partner. When I told Brenda about it, we saw the live cricket dragging away the dead one off the path. Interesting.

The golden rod is just about done flowering.

One yellow jacket

I went out to see how the war was going, and it looked pretty calm. After a while one yellow jacket showed up and tried to get into the Valentinium, but she was thrown out. So she went to the Benedictium, where she received a vigorous greeting and then fled.