Last week I took off a “super” box that has around 60 pounds of honey in it. This is the most honey I’ve ever pulled from one hive at a time. I have three other hives with the same amount of honey in each, which means I should have over 200 pounds of honey to bottle, if I am lucky.

Unfortunately, Erica and I have had some problems with sick cats. We lost two in the last month. One is sick and the other one is waiting for the results of a biopsy to see if he has cancer. My cats live a long time, but right now that means that all my cats are old and getting sick. I did not get further with the honey than robbing that one box.

I used a bee escape for the first time. This is a little puzzle that the bees can get out of, but not into. I put this under the “super” and the bees go down to the hive, but can’t get back up into the honey.

There were about 5 lazy bees left in the super, but I knocked on the side of the box and they took off back to the hive.

I learned the hard way the the secret to using the bee escape is to not use an inner cover above it. The inner cover has a slit so that the bees can get back in from the top, rendering the escape useless. At first I used an inner cover so that the hive would be ventilated during the recent heat wave. This time I put it under the escape so the bees could cool off, but they could not get back into the honey super.

In the past I have used “bee-gone” (stinky) and “Bitter Almond Oil” (almost as stinky) to force the bees out of the super. They sort of work, but are not really acceptable. I have used a leaf blower to blow the bees off the frames, but it takes a long time and the bees return immediately. I used a brush to gently brush them off, but it takes an hour to do a box, and I am almost guaranteed that some genius bees will find a way to sting me. The escape is the only method to clear the bees that really works, but it takes two days to use it. I have only the one escape. (I have a broken escape that I bought a long time ago. I found it under some leaves in the back and the frame was rotted and fell off. I will try to fix it.)

A few minutes ago I put the bee escape on the next box. It takes 24 hours to 48 hours for the bees to exit the super with the honey, so I’ll look tomorrow to see if they are gone. A group of bees went up my pants leg and let me know that they were unhappy with the situation. If I take my sneaker off I will not be able to get it back on because of the swelling.

I’ll repeat this for each hive until I get all the honey. In the mean time I will be spinning honey and Erica will be bottling it.

I have another hive, a split, that is not really doing well. That one is not storing honey and it does not seem to have much of a population. I guess the queen is not well. I do not have high hopes that it will make it through the Summer, much less the coming Winter.