The Honey Harvest.

The raw honey, strained, with comb.

Despite the heat wave last week me and my sisters went into the hives for the honey harvest!

Excited knowing that one hive had about a hundred pounds I was licking my chops to get at it.  On top of that I was going to give that hive a new queen since the old one was gone.  

With queen in hand I started to lift the frames of honey out.

One by one as I shook the bees off and my sister smoked them....I noticed that the honey was ....ALREADY GETTING EATEN!!!

I was miffed.  

So as I looked closer at the empty middle of the frames to see how much they had actually eaten, I was shocked...

Lo and behold there were eggs.

 Everywhere.

No larvae.

No capped brood.

But eggs.

Tons.

That means there was a queen who had just started laying within the past three days. And lay she did!  Neat, tidy, and ALOT.  Whoohoo a new queen who was a good worker!

But what to do with the other queen?

Split the hive!

So, I may not have gotten 8 thousand pounds of honey this year- but I got another hive!  Something I was hoping for! Thank you God;)

I will be checking on the new queen this week. Also the hive spilt will get a check.  They had gotten robbed last night, which to me was no big deal because there is no honey in there for the robber honey bees to take.  Only a little sugar syrup.  Even though it was the worst robbery attempt I've seen it was interesting to watch. Any other beekeeper reading this would probably want to slap me upside the head for "allowing," a weaker hive to get "robbed," but remember I said that beekeepers are weirdos and typically highly opinionated.  Whatever way they do things is ALWAYS the right way.  My motto this year is "natures way is the right way." SO take that weirdo beekeepers.

Watching them this morning I noticed a few bees getting kicked out but a good number of others heading in, and happily buzzing.  Our yard is full of clover, and its keeping all four hives happy and busy.