Second Honey Super Check

It's been quite some time since we've checked the bees or written. We've given them time to work during the honey flow without our disruptions. June was, overall, an ecstatically beautiful month! With the summer solstice at hand, the days became long enough for the foragers to fly 14-16 hours. I read the average life span of a honeybee during an active summer is 4-5 weeks. They literally work themselves to death, each colony collecting nectar and pollen from thousands of plants daily...and now it's already July!

We decided to give the honey supers another check on the morning of July 3rd. The weather was perfect, though on its way to becoming 95 degrees, so we opened the hives about 8:30am. The bees were already out and about and seemed to barely notice our presence, though we did use smoke and only opened the top super. Hive 2 had drawn out the comb of about 6 of the 10 frames, but there was no evidence of any honey or pollen on the comb. There were mostly baby bees exploring the area. Several corners in the comb had been chewed and probably used for capping brood and stores in the boxes below. Everyone looked busy, and we took the large number of young worker bees to be a good sign that the queen was healthy and still laying eggs.

Hive 1 had not drawn out any of the comb on any of the frames. Diana termed it the "Baby Bee Playroom." All the bees in the honey super were very young and seemed like they were just exploring the box and frames. Diana read somewhere that often new babies are given time to explore the hive before learning the rigours of worker bee life. The honey supers are apparently serving that purpose!

So, alas, we don't have honey to harvest this year. But we remind ourselves: we STILL have 2 full colonies of healthy bees, and hopefully they've produced enough honey for themselves to survive the winter! Our state apiarist wrote that a lot of folks are busy harvesting honey now and, generally, the area beekeepers have experienced a "fair to mediocre honey crop" this season. He ended the very informative newsletter with: "Keep those smokers lit and your bee veils on!"