We visited the hive once more yesterday. The super that was nearly full of honey, but not sealed last week was almost emptied out again. There was just about 3 frames of honey that was still not capped, though a shake test showed that it was pretty much cured.
The girls were just moving it down to the main hive bodies in preparation for huddling up for the Winter.
The bottom board was covered with mites that had been knocked off from the previous sugar dusting, but there didn't seem to be a significant number of mites actually on the bees themselves. Hopefully they are strong enough and the mites are few enough that they will make it for the next few months (really only three months or so here in California).
We took the super off and took the few frames with honey home to scrape. It isn't worth getting an extractor for just these three frames and there is wax left on one entire super and half of another to start them off next season. We examined a couple frames in the hive bodies and found the queen almost right away so we just closed the hive back up so as not to disturb them any more than necessary.
Finally we put on the entrance reducer to give them less area to defend while they are in their huddle and started to pack up. We put cedar chips in the boxes with the empty supers we left behind to discourage wax moths.
While were were packing up some of the field bees that had been out and about began to return. They flew to the entrance reducer and milled around on the surface trying to find where the big opening had gone. Meanwhile a few of their sisters from inside the hive peeked their tails out from under the hive cover which we have lifted a few mm with some pebbles from the inner cover to provide ventilation. When they started fanning a few field bees decided to give up on the search for the reduced main entrance opening and just went in the top. I hope that doesn't mean there is a risk of robbing through the top of the hive, but I think that they will be able to defend the inner cover opening alright.
We have come up with a nice design (I think) for the honey jar labels. We just need to get the actual adhesive paper and have them printed up. So keep an eye out for the product to go up in our
shop.
In the meantime check out this woman's beautiful
photography of bees in Australia. Amazing detail that she gets.
Please visit our shop to purchase Noe Valley Honey and other hive products from the Pollen Princesses.
Therefore the bees have been out in force. We have seen significant numbers of them on the lavender and rosemary in the neighborhood. The plum trees have not started to bloom yet, though.
In Berkeley, I've seen several bees on the jade plants which are fully in bloom now.
When we visited the Stybring Arboretum in Golden Gate park over this weekend there were bees on almost every plant that was in flower.
You can see that they are gathering pollen from the flowers they visit, which means they are getting ready for brood.
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