During the year I harvest honey in small amounts whenever I run out of bottles to sell. I try to get 10 full medium frames from the hives which gives me 30 to 40 pounds of honey. I leave the partially full frames behind.

In the fall, however, I have to take all the supers off the hives. Currently there are 7 supers on the hives. I did not put supers on the two hives that I got from Goose Rock farms (Martha and Ethel). These nucs did not fill the deeps with honey so I never put supers on. I got these later in the Spring and they did not really do well. I hope they will make it through the winter. Connie, my weak hive, has no supers.

Fanny and Justine, the hives that I got from A & Z up in Connecticut are doing very very well and each has 3 mostly full supers. The unnamed hive that was a guest hive is doing well enough so that I put one super on her. I re-queened this hive and she is now doing very well and has recovered from the abuse that the owner gave her.

I figure that the 7 supers should give about 15 pounds each which should be 70 to 100 pounds of honey. Perhaps less since I robbed Justine September 3rd and she has not had time to refill the frames.

Soon, I will take off all the supers. This is work since I clean the bees off them by hand and the bees are not happy about me robbing them. This should be Indian Summer in late October. I might put it off until November, but I should not do it when the weather is cold. First, because it will chill the bees, and second, because cold honey does not flow, and I will have trouble spinning the frames and filtering the honey.

I thought that I may have waited too long to re-queen Connie. I am still concerned.

The life span of a bee is short. They live 28 to 35 days. Some may live a little longer. I think that the bees were already getting old in the hive that I re-queened. The new workers will not emerge for about 21 days from the time the queen lays them. There may be a few days where there are no bees taking care of the brood. If that happens the new brood die. I am hoping that there will be enough bees, along with the queen to care for the new brood and keep them warm and fed.

In the cool weather a bee  can live a 5 months. Bees born in September and October are supposed to last the longest.

The hive acts like it is doing well. There are lots of bees by the entrance and the workers are bringing back pollen. This is sign that the hive is “queen-right”.

I released the queen on September 12th. If I see new bees on October 3rd then I know that Connie stands a chance over the winter. The new bees will be smaller and golden in color. The hive is now half Russian, but the new hive will probably be all Italian. The new bees might be part Carniolan. The place where I bought the queen had some Carniolan hives and the queen was naturally mated which means I don’t know who the fathers are.

The new bees are smaller than the old bees, so I will look for color and size on October 3. Keep your fingers crossed.

Connie, my part Russian hive, has been fading for about a month. I decided last week to re-queen her.

The symptoms are that she has no activity at the front of the hive. There were 2  or 3 bees hanging out, but no foraging. This is a sign that the hive is in trouble. I thought she had suddenly died, but when I opened here up, there were lots of bees, just hanging out, and there was lots of honey in the main hive. I took the supers off because they were empty. Clearly, Connie had not been foraging when the other hives are packing away honey.

Last night I drove down to Summit NJ where a beekeeper named Ivan has a lots of bees and always has a few queens. I got a very lively and fat queen from him. There was a language issue, so I guess I got an Italian queen. He said had Carnies and I asked for one, but this looks more like an Italian than a Carnie. I will know when the new bees come out in three weeks.

I put the cage in the hive last night and when I came home from work tonight, it looked like they were not treating her aggressively. I released her and she ran right into the hive. It was very cool to watch. She acted like she wanted to get down to business.

Even beforeI released her, the hive was showing much more activity. Suddenly there are dozens of bees running off and returning with pollen. I think she was accepted and is now dominating the hive.  It looks like a different hive.

I will know for sure 18-22 days from now when the new brood emerges. I should see new bees, somewhat smaller than the older bees, flying around the entrance.

It is only a month and a half before the first frost. I am hoping for a long warm autumn so that Connie can build up some population. Connie can lay thousands of eggs a day, and from the looks of this queen, she might just do that.  She already has a good stash of honey in the hive boxes. With a little luck, Connie will come out next Spring healthy and happy.

I suited up tonight about 7PM and went back and robbed Justine. She had 3 supers, each with 10 frames, but I only took full frames and wound up with ten. Some of them were very heavy, some were 3/4 full on one side and the other 100%.

I spent the rest of the night scraping off the caps and spinning the honey. (I had alreadyspent two hours this afternoon cleaning the spinner and the buckets.)

I filtered the honey, once with the course filter to get the big wax chunks, and once with a fine filter to get the rest. It still has wax. I had to prop the spinner up so that it dripped into the first bucket and at 11pm it was still dripping a little, but there was very little left. I have the last bucket tipped with a bucket holder to drip into the bottling tank.

It looks like around 35 pounds of honey. This is pretty good from 10 frames. Supers average 15 to 25 pounds each. I could have taken more honey, but I left the partial frames for the bees. I’ll get those frames the next time.

35 pounds is about 42 or more bears.

I have to make the new labels tomorrow morning and start bottling up the bears.

I’ll put the sign out when we get a few dozen bottled.

The honey was mostly the black kind you get with goldenrod. The rest was golden honey from summer flowers. The mix came out a deep brown like bourbon. It tastes dark and nutty. Erica prefers the light flowery spring honey. I like this dark and aromatic fall honey.