THE FOLLOWING WAS LAST UPDATED ON JAN. 9, 2012.
 |
Foundationless beekeeping is turning out to be less successful than I’d hoped. Foundationless hives require considerably more resources to thrive than conventional hives with foundation, and those resources are not consistently available in St. John’s, Newfoundland, given our cold wet springs and short summers. I was recently informed that the foundationless hives can survive in Newfoundland, but they will likely take two years to establish themselves in our cold climate before I can harvest any honey from them. I wouldn’t have bothered with foundationless hives had I known that from the start. As much as I like the idea of going all-natural, I want some honey too.
Read on . . . »
I inspected both of our hives today, but didn’t have my regular cracker jack film crew along. No video. No photos. But you can pretend I saw something similar to this:
THE FOLLOWING HAS BEEN UPDATED SINCE ORIGINALLY POSTED.
File this one under: “Stuff We’ve Thought About Doing But Aren’t Sure We’ll Do Because We Don’t Really Know What We’re Doing Yet.”
If all goes well, we might be able to harvest some honey from two of our Langstroth hives this year. Our plan has always been to cut the honey comb out of foundationless frames and keep it as comb honey, or crush and strain the honey out of the comb and bottle it from there.
But should we use 9 frames in the honey supers or 10? Here’s one of our honey supers with a 9-frame spacing:
 |
I got my first taste of honey from one of our hives this morning (5 minutes ago), and there is no doubt about it: It’s the best honey I’ve tasted in my life.
This is what it looks like at the bottom of a Mason jar, a mouthful chunk of comb with honey in it.
I decided to inspect the hives this morning because it’s going to rain for the next few days and I knew I’d be too busy with my silly job next week to poke around with the bees.
I wanted to look down at the frames to see how much comb has been drawn out, but I didn’t want to pull out the frames and disturb the bees too much.
Read on . . . »
Latest Comments