Hive Check 8/1/17

So I decided not to split my hive at the Source. After consulting several books, a couple of long-term beekeepers, and soul-searching, I decided I'd just try to harvest some honey and keep them less cramped. Of course, as soon as I get ready to go, we get some rain. Which is lovely, it makes things a little cooler when I do start, but...

In any event, I went out around 3:45pm. It had just rained a little, was a little overcast, and probably around 80-degrees. The bees seemed happy and lazy, but not overly angry. I noticed that they have started using the crack in the hive as a secondary entrance; I may want to consider getting some mesh and covering that so they only have the one entrance.

I smoked them a little and opened the hive. They were quite content, no aggression or sounding at all grumpy. I started in and was surprised to see they haven't expanded very much. They still had 18 full bars and one half-bar that was just starting to be filled. Most bars are still a combination of brood and honey and pollen, in a pretty good ratio, and with evidence of the queen with several stages of brood development. Only one of the bars was all honey, and it was in the middle -- I wonder if the second entrance makes them want to preserve their honey more towards the middle of the hive? Curious.

In any event, I decided to clean up the hive a little, by scraping some of the comb off the walls. I put that in a bowl to harvest the honey from. I also cut off a strip of a bar that was nearly ready to start cross-combing, and it was mostly honey, so I put it in the bowl to harvest. Unfortunately, when I was examining the full bar with the honey, it started to break off from the bar a little. I tried to get as many bees off as possible and then let it drop into the bowl.

It's so sad. There were several honey-drowning bees and a few of them crushed. Once I buckled the hive back up, I picked up pieces of the comb and brushed off as many bees as I could. I realized that a good couple dozen were going to drown and there was nothing to be done, so I picked them out of the honey. One of them looked larger than the others, and I worried it was the queen! I really don't know, because it was smooshed and elongated because of it, so I'll just have to keep watch the next time I'm in the hive.

I wish I was better at this, and it's little consolation that I have a little bit of honey to process.