Second year beekeeping-every day is a challenge

     Well, it's been four months since I've added an update and what a "long, strange trip it's been." The summer started out with two strong hives and one brand new hive and then both of last year's hives swarmed.  The hive that I always called the "over achievers" seemed to be coming back slowly while the "party girls" never did get itself back on track. The former produced a new queen but the latter never did so I drove to northern Massachusetts and bought a new queen-just in time to celebrate the English monarchy's Diamond Jubilee.

I hoped that she'd be my own long reigning queen but two weeks later, there was no sign of her and the hive looked even weaker. The hive may have killed her or she might have just flown away but one way or another, it was a failure. I tried various other techniques including taking several frames of capped brood (baby bee eggs)

from my new hive (which thankfully is amazingly strong) and put them into the struggling hive. The reasoning behind that is to add more bees to the weak hive and help it build itself back up. That didn't work and then two weeks ago I went in for the weekly inspection and found this:

which on closer look is:

     This is where you say, "ick, ick, ick" as many times as I did!! This is called "wax moth" and is a moth that will infest hives, lay its eggs in the wax and then will virtually eat its way through the hive.  If the moths try to enter a strong hive, the bees will drive them out but in a weak hive, the hive just doesn't have enough soldiers to protect it and the hive may succumb. I followed all of the other Bee Club members ("beeks") suggestions.  I took out the infected frames and destroyed the most damaged and then froze the frames with only minor infestation. (Not to worry, I didn't put them next to the ice cream-I cleaned out the freezer, tied the frames into a plastic garbage bag and froze then by themselves.) Unfortunately, another week has gone by and the hive looks even weaker than before. I think the party girls are just runing out of time.

     The good news is that despite also getting infested with these damn moths, the "over achievers" hive seems to be rallying. I may have gotten to them in time or I may just be lucky or I may just be wrong, but right now, they seem to be struggling to their feet.

     And then, there's the new hive. You aren't supposed to get honey in a hives first year but apparently the new hive didn't hear that. So far I've harvested about 40 pounds of honey and there are almost three weeks left for them to store and cap some more.





     On a happier note, in addition to honey, beekeepers also can harvest wax from their hives. When you take the cappings off the honey-like in the above picture-you end up with a pile of wax which looks like this when you rinse off all the honey:

      You can't just melt it as is since it has pieces of bee bodies and other impurities from the hive mixed in. You need to expose it to high heat but not so high that it will burn. At the same time, you want to filter it so that just wax remains.  What is recommended is that you put it all into a stocking, and hang it in a solar melter and let nature help.  Solar melters are easy to construct from an old foam cooler lined with aluminum foil.

                         What's left is pure wax:                                                                

 and the leftover detritus:

      So right now, I have 40 pounds of bottled honey, a couple pounds of wax for making candles, one amazingly strong hive and two hives for which I have great concern.

     Sigh............to be continued.