Submitted by Troy    

I received and installed my hives in early June, soon after my last quarterly report. We could tell that they were doing great right from the start. The queen’s laying pattern was nearly perfect, and the population exploded shortly after installation. 

We extracted a super's worth of honey recently. We took eight frames off of our hive, cut the caps off with a bread knife and wax scraper, put it in an extractor, and spun it until the honey was out. Then we ran the honey through a couple of filters and, from there, into jars. When it was all over, we had a little over two gallons of honey. I don't know if this is more or less than usual to get out of a super, but I was excited about the amount we got.

We are planning to move the hive to my house sometime soon. All in all, this hive has been very successful, and I am very optimistic about it. I have learned a lot about the inspection and extraction processes. Thanks for the wonderful learning experience!

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Troy Honegger

Submitted by Troy in Q1    

I am getting off to a late start with my bees; we are only just getting them!  I don't know about how late is too late to get a hive started, but I am hoping that they will get a decent start and grow strong, even if it isn't until next year.  Still, just assembling the hives has been an interesting experience.  Sometime during the process of putting the eyelets in the frames, I decided that it may be worth the extra money to buy frames assembled in the future!  Even so, I am glad we did it that way this year, at least; it was a great learning experience.  Now I feel like I really know how a hive is put together.  Though this is a little late in the year, I am still looking forward to getting a new hive started.