It's been 5 days since my last hive check, and I wanted to see if any of the honey in the super had been capped yet. I also wanted to encourage my son (Sam, 11) to get over a little gitchiness about the bees, so I cajoled him into suiting up with me by telling him he could manage the smoker. Alas, I didn't get any pictures of him in full gear--but he was an excellent helper and was very gentle and calm with the smoker. He did vacate the hive yard to a distance of 20 feet or so once I got the top off, but that's ok: he came back to look at a few cool things (like honey, and propolis).
Here's what I found:
The honey is still uncapped. But that's ok. There's a lot more of it, and the foundation is drawn on pretty much every square inch of the frames, and full up with nectar. I did a bit of research on how long it takes bees to cap honey, and it turns out this is extremely variable. Once a bee fills a cell, the nectar may be visited by another bee that will move it or eat it or even cap it prior to still another bee uncapping it. Once the colony decides to make stores, it can take between one and five days of fanning air across the comb to continue the evaporation process that turns nectar into honey--and if the weather has been damp as it has been here (thunderstorms almost every day!), it can take even longer. The water content has to be below about 18% before the bees will cap it. (source: http://www.nzbees.net/forum/threads/how-long-do-bees-take-to-cap-honey.867/)
So I just have to be patient, I guess. They're working, and from what everyone tells me, it's an astonishingly successful hive.
I got some nice bee photos, both of the busy outside of the hive (it's hot today, and humid: they're cooling off and cooling the hive) and of some individual bees. They're so pretty, my bees.
No comments:
Post a Comment