New Bees

On Saturday we dropped off a box to a beekeeper in Johnsonville who put some frames of bees in it, including a laying queen (still to be named). Next morning we collected it and put it in our bee coop. Sunday was wet and they stayed in, complaining about the weather over here in Newtown, but now it's sunny and here they come creeping out of their hive, flying around in front of it to take a good look at it and then pottering off to check the new neighbourhood out. 

P.S. 

The other hive's new queen's name is Becky. She's named after Genghis Khan's peace-making and successful daughter https://www.rejectedprincesses.com/princesses/alakhai-beki while also thinking of Becky who is one of the calmest and clearest communicating players that I've coached. 

Good health, and a new Queen to name.

These bees are from brood that has been officially inspected and declared to be fair, not foul. Hooray! We don't need the worst kind of Guy Fawkes bonfire today. 

It seems golden Rachael and her old guard have probably swarmed (it's rare that could have happened without us knowing about it, so maybe they went to the Folk Festival too) and also she has been superceded by a beautiful brown daughter (or possibly granddaughter) whose laying pattern is just fine. 

We put in ApiLife Var wafers to protect Rachael's daughter's brood and took off a whole box of dear hard-working Rachael's spring honey. 

Here is the bee coop today, with plastic tubs of honey frames we hope to extract and a wee hive where Malka's was which we hope to have a nuc move into.  

Summer has begun. 

Home.

We are back living where the bees do, hurray. I ran out of honey so I got the first frame of Malka's posthumous harvest out of its box in the bee coop. It's midwinter so it had completely crystallized and our renovations aren't finished yet so I didn't want to make much mess. 

I scraped the cells of crystallised honey, put them in a glass jug, carefully microwaved them until the honey was melted and the wax wasn't, mixed it, let the wax float, poured the honey out under a scraping paper, and then cleaned up with cold water. It's not Malka's most delicious honey by a long shot, but I'm using it for lemon and honey drinks anyway, because we've had covid and I have a colony of frogs in my throat. 

Bee news

1. Malka's hive died sometime last week, alas, she was elderly and maybe the new queen didn't make it home from her mating flight. 

2. Rachael's hive is fine and Iris and I insulated it for winter tonight. 

3. No matter how pleased one is to see them and how helpful one feels insulation would be, beehives don't want hugs. 

4. This outfit ... 

It is very practical for keeping the underarm bee sting cool, and I rather like the look of it, but I haven't thought of any other occasions it'll be useful for. 

Bees, getting by without me very well.

We got into the hives (in bee coop at bottom right of picture) yesterday and put in Bayvarol to help them stay healthy while growing the bees who look after everything over winter. They are looking good, we didn't see either queen but there were young brood, pollen stores and honey and no mites in the drone brood I looked in. 

We haven't harvested this season because the honey-house (centre, it'll also be the laundry and back porch) is still being built. As depicted, the house is full of builders, and will be for a while yet; though the end is starting to be imaginable and we've been deciding all the colours (purples and blues outside, yellows inside mostly).