Well its been several weeks since my last post. I've been super busy with work (traveling for the last two weeks) and have had various other things going on, including not being able to manage my time well. Its summer. There are so many things that have sounded better than sitting in front of my crappy, virus ridden computer indoors. Hive #1 is doing very well. We have a honey super on it and the frames are getting filled nicely. This weekend we may even take a little honey out to see how it tastes. Hive #2 is catching up. In a week or two we may add a honey super to the hive. Right now they are storing a lot of honey in the hive body (boxes for making baby bees) and they will need some more wiggle room.
Overall we really haven't spent a lot of time doing bee related activities. For the most part, we've left them alone for the month of June (except a little more robbing of one hive to give to the other). Hopefully the weather will be better in July and we will see a lot of honey. You know, the hardest thing about this whole beekeeping endeavor is playing the waiting game. All you can really do most of the time is wait and watch. Giving a colony of bees a pep talk or a lecture on how to make honey faster doesn't really work. Believe me, I've tried. June has been really wet. We've had several, well many severe storms and are lucky not to have seen any damage to the hives. Places in our area have had to deal with lots of downed trees, power outages, roofs blown off etc. Perhaps July will be drier and um flowerier?
Going to order lib balm tubes this coming July. I am thinking with the sample of honey we take off in the next few weeks I can make a test batch of home made lip balm. Who wants to be my lab rat?
