22 Jun 2011
Our first harvest of 2011
The bees have had a busy spring! Despite all my checkerboarding and trying my best to confuse the ladies and give them plenty of space, they seem to have swarmed about a month ago. I ordered a new, theoretically mite-resistant marked queen, and installed her into the hive on the same day my father was re-installed as President of EMJC, the shul atop which the bees live. He was honored to share his installation date with Her Majesty, who was of course promptly named Queen Esther.
Queen Esther seems to be doing just fine, and I saw capped brood and larva and eggs when I looked into the hive a few days ago. Not only that - we found a full medium super of honey ready to harvest, and a second super that I expect will be ready in the next few weeks!
As you can see above, we carefully sliced the caps off the honey before spinning it in our new, two-frame little honey extractor.
A bit of straining later, and we were left with more honey than we got all of last year - and it's still only June! What a wonderful start to a beautiful, sweet summer.