Tuesday, March 5, 2013

Beekeeping: Harvesting Honey (March 5, 2013)

The past few days have been occupied with harvesting honey from my beehive. Sadly, we lost the bees again this year. With no bees to tend the comb, I decided I'd have to remove all the honey from the hive to avoid its being ruined or robbed by other bees or wasps. It took four days--mostly because I was extracting honey in the midst of doing other work, but it was still a big job. I harvested enough honey for a couple of years at least (55 pounds). Local friends and family will be getting presents, but I may try making mead.

The hive does not appear to be diseased. It's not clear what happened. I had seen activity as recently as about three weeks before I realized something was wrong. On one of the few recent warm days we've had, no bees were entering or leaving the hive and it was clear that the colony was lost. I'm hoping to find a swarm of bees as soon as possible, to get the hive going again. 

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