Sunday 15 July 2012

Properly official

It seems I really am a fully fledged bee keeper!  My membership card for the British Bee Keepers association arrived in the post earlier this week,  my very own bee keeping suit arrived (plus a spare for anyone who wants to take a closer look in the hives next to me) and 'im indoors excelled himself with a "well done you" present...


This gorgeous sun catcher was designed and made by the very lovely bexbydesign.  Didn't she do well? Could there be a more perfect combination of quilting and bee keeping in a piece of glass?  I've been waiting for a decent sunny day to take its picture so you could see all those gorgeous honeycomb bubbles in the golden glass glow...but impatience got the better of me so here it is in the pale and dappled sunshine we had today.

There was no bee keeping school at the apiary yesterday as it was the annual open day so this weekend's bee keeping was entirely confined to my own hives.

Last week, in the spirit of pure hopeful optimism I'd put a super full of empty frames on top of the larger of the two colonies.  I hoped that just a little bit of warm weather and a few sunny days to encourage the flowers to bloom might give them just enough nectar to stimulate wax making and get them thinking about making some cells to store honey in, hopefully with more space to move around they'd also be less inclined to swarm and move on elsewhere.
As soon as I took the roof off  there were good signs of bees crowding together to make wax...



Sadly the frames at the very edge were only being walked on and investigated by a few stragglers.. no signs of wax making ...


But the next one in was already having wax drawn on it...


And the next one had not only had all the wax drawn out into cells but those cells were full of glistening nectar all ready to be evaporated into HONEY!!


And the next one was starting to be capped - that means the bees have evaporated at least 20% of the water out of the nectar and it is officially, properly HONEY 
Yup let me type that again - properly officially H-O-N-E-Y !!


By the time I got to the next frame I was positively giddy with excitement... A whole side of a frame of capped honey!!  The smell was AMAZING!


I was giddy with the smell!  And the possibilities of them managing to do all this in a week that wasn't great weather-wise when there is still the possibility of a few more weeks of honey making weather ahead of us sent me into a giddy spin!  Giddylicious excitement abounded! so much so that 'im indoors grabbed a spare suit and came for a look see...

 

... and provided a handy stopping off point for a couple of girls who needed a rest before the final flight home. What a gent!







1 comment:

  1. Giddylicious Honey. Well done Helen. I hope you stole a finger full to have for your tea!!! Loving the stained glass and love the word Giggylicious!!!

    ReplyDelete

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