It is Almost Honey Time

In the corner is a queen cell

This week I am going to a cross country camp, so last Friday Corky came to check the hive one last time with me before I am gone. Since we needed to move quickly, Corky took charge of the hive, but I still observed and smoked the bees. Luckily, today there weren't that many queen cells, which is good. (These show that the hive could swarm if you don't cut them off.) Corky said that we could have started pulling frames of honey today, but that we should wait till next week just so the frames get a little more honey. He also estimated that the hive has 120 pounds of honey right now! That means I could pull around 60 pounds, and the bees still are not done collecting and making honey. I am going to ask the cafe close to my house if they would be interested in selling my honey. Hope they say yes. I will need to design a label and name for the honey.

We also switched the first box to box number three, so the queen would have more room to lay. The bees were also nice this time. In past openings of the hive the bees have acted mean and stung us. This time though they seemed sweet.