Blessed Vacant2Vegetables™ bees
yield unbelievable
bounty
By Chris Cordin-Blitstein
Who knew? I mean Danny [the beekeaper] told me from the
getgo not to expect anything the first year, but
sometimes-good things happen. The bees absolutely thrived
this summer; they could be spotted in the garden working the
blossoms all the time. They were very, very happy at their
new address. Anyway, last weekend Danny harvested the honey
from the hives it was not a totally unexpected move...he’d
been checking on them all summer, but the goldenrod is just
about done he said so this season’s a wrap. The bees were
blessed and now so are we.
Danny checking to see
everyone’s healthy
But, I’m getting way ahead of
the story.
After the hives were installed this spring Danny knew after
the first couple of weeks that all three of the new queens
liked their hives. What you want, he explained, is the queen
to start laying eggs...turns out Queen #1 was ambitious and
had overflow where they will create combs outside the trays
called a burr comb. Beekeepers can’t have that. What they do
once the brood box is heavy with eggs and honey the
beekeeper puts on a queen excluder so she can’t get upstairs
to the honey combs, she’s just an egg laying fool and needs
to focus on hive control.
He discovers there are lots and lots of eggs.
Over summer the additional stories were filled with trays of
honey-filled combs. The compartments are called the
honey super.
This was the action last Sunday.
Danny kicks the bees off and harvests the extra
trays filled with honey. He figures there is about 70 –80
pounds of honey left in the hive which is plenty for the
bees to make it through to the following spring. During the
winter the bees keep the queen and the honey warm moving
around inside the hive.
The stuff on the top of the lid resting against the hive is
propolas, a bee made glue they use to keep everything tight.
On the ground you can also see the dig marks made by the
skunk that pesters and digs around the hives at night
The box on the left side is for honey filled trays.
This tray below is filled with honey. Danny
said he figures he’ll be able to extract 65 - 75 pounds of
honey from the trays he removed from the hives at the V2V
garden.
The box filled with trays go home with Dan. He puts them
into a centrifuge to separate the honey from the comb.
