A couple of weeks ago Kirk came over and helped me do a hive inspection. We found that my bees were honey bound even though I had added a new box a few weeks prior. We moved things around a bit and took out a frame of honey at that time with the idea that I would take the top box the next time the weather warmed up.
This weekend the weather finally warmed up and I was able to collect a few more frames of honey. Not quite as much as I had expected. I thought that the whole top box had been full of honey when Kirk and I opened it up a couple weeks ago but when I went back in this time there was 1 frame of brood - half drone and half worker, 1 frame was partially drawn with new comb, another frame was half drone and half honey, a few had uncapped honey, some only capped and some mixed.
I took as much as I could before the bees got really peeved but that ended up being only about 3 and a half frames (I tossed the half a frame of drone brood at Kirk's instruction). As you can see in the picture above, some of the honey was uncapped but I think we stayed within the 10% limit. Uncapped honey has a higher water content and will spoil in the jar if it exceeds 10% of the mix.
The bees are doing well overall though. If you click this picture you can see two large drones on the porch and two foragers laden with pollen. I still need to finish the starter strips on a deep box I put together last weekend. Once I do that I think I'll call Kirk for another house visit to help me add it to the bottom of the hive and with reshuffling the rest of the frames. I'm confident I could do it myself at this point but with Kirk's help I know we'd get it done much faster with less stress on the bees.
Next month will be the one year anniversary of the hive. We've pulled 148 oz of honey so far. I hope to bring a sample for tasting to the next meeting.
