Hey everyone, finally the rain has arrived, what is good about rain (other than the obvious) the bees love it, this can be seen the day after in their hugely increased activity levels, flowers start to bloom and the much awaited honey flow begins!
Most folks have never been lucky enough to look into a bee-hive, last year I decided to get two supers and install windows into them, this has many benefits but mainly to know when to harvest, see their progress and spot unwelcome bugs!
We harvested honey from this hive around two weeks back and put two new supers on. Generally bees build from the middle bottom up...
What we can see here is a really good sign of honey flow, This frame is number 18 on the top of two supers thus meaning that the lower frames more to the middle should be full of ripe, capped, raw honey!
If you take a look over to the right you will notice the bees veraciously adding nectar to the individual comb compartments. This will be capped and ripen within 2-3 weeks which again will allow us to do another honey harvest extraction!
This window I installed at the back of the same super giving a nice back view, if one peers inside closely to the middle generally more activity and progress on these frames where as the outside frames with less honey and nectar, standard procedure. When bees run out of space (no threat of that for the next few weeks) they start to build on the bottom or top-side of the frames and then the roof.
A good bee-keeper naturally will stop that from happening by managing the swarm correctly with regular inspections and harvesting honey timeously, an overcrowded hive is never a good idea and can also lead to the swarm splitting or absconding.
Spot the nectar? This is one of our original and biggest swarms and has always given us a nice yearly yield albeit much later in the season due to the lack of rain, than last year!
Nature the incredible, be sure to stay tuned for more of my epic bee-keeping adventures!
Cheer$;)