2 Queens, some more honey and preparations for Autumn

Thank goodness, our new Queen has been accepted by the queenless hive... Not only that but she is laying like a trooper and is wonderfully easy to spot thanks to her bright mark (thank you Donald).

Once the hurdle of requeening was out of the way, we proceeded to take off the supers from the hive (we were reluctant to make too many changes at once). We took 4 supers off but none were completely full and only about half were capped. Still, we managed to extract about 20 pounds of honey which is still in the honey bucket for now. This harvest is much darker than the Spring yield and the consensus seems to be that it has a more complex taste.

We are now at the point where the bees have cleaned out the super frames and we are feeding both hives - one at a time as we only have the one (small!) feeder. We have also put Apilife var on both colonies. I was a bit concerned - apparently the colony may become "slightly agitated" during treatment.... However, so far, we have not noticed any reaction. It also says that they might take down less food - fingers crossed as both colonies definitely need it (neither has ten fully drawn out brood frames - I was hoping that the feeding would make them draw them out).

Question: Some of my super frames still have pollen in - am I ok to leave them wrapped in bin liners over the winter or will the pollen go mouldy? Does it matter?

Honey Sold Out...and Issues with a Queen

Have just about recovered from the Nunney Street Fayre where our honey sold out with orders for additional jars taken! The stall looked (I think) quite good with a smoker, bee book, and super frame for display and the all important tasting jar. Liam had raided McDonalds for those wooden coffee stirrer things that I then snapped in half for people to use to taste.

So what did we learn? People were intrigued at the idea of raw honey but I think mostly just loved the fact that our hives were less than ten minutes walk away from our stall. I also discovered that at least four other people in Nunney keep bees that I had no idea about - although bizarrely none seemed aware of the oilseed rape fields that we can see from our hives - but which are in fact, nearer Nunney than we are. Interestingly over the course of the whole day, perhaps just 5 people said they didn't like the texture (granular) so I definitely wont be worrying about that again. A stall nearby was selling Wiltshire honey at £4.20 but nobody seemed at all bothered by our price of £5. Several people mentioned Manuka honey so I suppose if they are paying £7-10 a jar for that, £5 didn't seem nearly as much.

We also had a surprise visit from Donald from the Frome BKA who happened to be visiting the Fayre (just as Liam got slightly carried away and put a sign up saying "Last Jar - £50").

However, back home from the show we now have to address a problem with our parent colony. Our sealed Queen cell hatched successfully and we left the hive for the required 3 weeks. However, we then booked a last minute holiday to Turkey leaving on the day when we were due to check to see if the virgin had mated successfully and was laying. On the grounds that we couldn't actually do anything constructive in the time we had left before going, we decided to leave the hive well alone. Then (long story this - sorry) our holiday firm went bust, and we booked a less exotic holiday for the following week. In the meantime, it poured with rain and we decided to put off the check again. On coming back from a damp and drizzly Cornwall, we noticed something was wrong. Very few bees were flying back to the parent hive, and when we opened it up, there were no eggs and no brood. All we could see were bees, stores and masses of gunky grey cells....

Cue mass panic. Us being us, we immediately decided it must be American or possibly European Foul Brood. (Mainly because I couldn't remember which was which). Visions of burning hives and horrified bee officials loomed. We rang Norman. Norman was calm. He pointed out that it was extremely unlikely to be either of the FB's and that August pollen is often grey. We grew calmer. We finished the call with suggestions to smell the grey gunky stuff and to ring Donald to see if there were any spare Queens.

We smelt the grey gunky stuff. It didnt smell. We probed it with a biro. It was clearly pollen. Why didnt we do this first?! Much embarrassment. Still no eggs or brood though. We rang Donald. He asked us to check for Queenlessness and explained that we should take a frame of eggs from our second hive and put it in the first one. If there is a Queen, nothing would happen. If the colony was Queenless, the bees would start making Queen cells from the imported eggs. He also explained that he has a mated Queen, but that she wouldnt be ready to go anywhere for several days.

The situation at present then, is that we have put a frame of eggs in the parent hive. (Which involved Liam, an open bee veil - his this time - and eight over-friendly bees, but that is a whole different story). We will try and check the frame tomorrow or weds but are keen to get the colony Queenright asap so we can begin preparations for Winter.

Honey for Sale?!

I am sitting at the kitchen table putting the finishing touches to my labels for the 20 or so jars of honey I want to sell at the Nunney Street Fayre this weekend. It is a ridiculously small number to sell, but as Liam takes honey in his tea instead of sugar, he refuses to let me sell any more!

We have decided to try and explain the concept of raw honey - unprocessed, untreated/unheated honey which is wholly different from the "commercial" honeys offered by the supermarkets. I know that some people will baulk at the fact that it is granular in texture, but we couldnt bring ourselves to heat it in the oven or heaven forbid, the microwave and so alter the flavours.

We have had some interesting pricing debates too. I have seen Somerset honey for sale at £6 in the local farm shop and £5.50 odd in local delis. We have decided to aim for £5 for a pound jar.

The next few weeks will be busy ones. Tomorrow we need to check to see if our new Queen is laying in the original colony - and we need to feed our second colony who are slow to draw out the foundation in their hive. Once the Fayre is over we will also need to put our names on the list for the club extractor and take off the four supers for extracting!