Propolis

Was removing propolis from the top feeder tonight which got me to thinking just what is propolis and where does it come from? It is not a bee-made product such as wax, but it is produced by the bees.

They use it to close up distances less than 3/8" apart.  Bees are happiest when things are precisely 3/8" apart from one another. Anything more than that and they will build it out with comb until it is 3/8" apart. Anything less than that and they fill it up with propolis. This 3/8" distance is known as 'bee space'.

Propolis is made from resin such as sap, wax, essential oils, pollen and a host of other trace ingredients. It is a natural antibiotic and anti-fungal and is prized for its medicinal properties. Bees will also use propolis in the hive as an antiseptic paint to protect the walls, frames, etc. Everything within the hive that comes in contact with the bees, they will lacquer with propolis. Interestingly, a predator killed within the hive that is too big for the bees to carry away will be mummified in a covering of propolis.

Sap in the bee's baskets.

The foragers store the harvested sap in its leg baskets to bring back to the hive. Once mixed, the propolis can be any color, depending on the plant source. It has a bitter taste but a sweetish scent.

Because of its healing properties, propolis is used in ointments,  lip balm, lozenges, etc. It is even available as a toothpaste where it is thought to prevent tooth decay!

They say it is easy to harvest propolis by placing a small-holed screen under the inside cover after the summer honey harvest. The bees will busily fill the holes with winter on the way. Once covered with propolis, place the screen in the freezer. When good and froze, flexing the screen (similar to twisting an ice cube tray) will release the brittle propolis. I may try this next year, just to say I did. I'm not sure what I'll do with the harvested propolis but I have all winter to think of something. :-)

Moved Some Drawn Frames to the Sasha Hive

I was reminded that a queen will scale down her laying during the dearth and pick back up again with the fall nectar flow as they are doing now in both hives. The bees in the Sasha hive are finally getting to work in the top box and this new queen is laying super up there as you can see in this photo.

I had left the honey super on the OV hive and the bees had plenty of frames nearly full with either capped honey or open cells of nectar so moved half into the Sasha hive. These added to the 4 frames of brood and honey they had started will position them nicely going into fall.

I moved the rest of the frames of nectar into the top box of the OV hive. That hive continues to be amazing! I'm confident now that the Sasha hive will be just as strong through the winter and looking forward to another split in the spring.

Tick 4 — Won a Ribbon!

Was blown away to see that our honey placed second at the county fair! It will be neat to get the scoring sheet to learn more about color class but the tag did have the moisture content at 16.5%, which was the lowest of the entries!

Well done OV hive! Simply outstanding!

Its All a Learning Process

Dropped off my entry at the Charles County Fair tonight and the judge happened to be there so I asked him about how honey is judged, never having done this before. I can tick off the things I've done wrong already!

Tick 1 — Different colored lids. Not knowing what this is all about I used what I had on hand.

Tick 2 — Jars should be filled with honey to the bottom of the lid. I have one jar just slightly too low - about the thickness of a bee's wing.

Tick 3 — There should be no bubbles on the top of the honey. My jars fell over in my bag en route to the fair so when he opened one, of course there were bubbles!

Yikes! It's not looking good, is it? There were already 6 other entries looking full and bubble-free so I probably don't stand a chance at this point. But I am looking forward to learning the color grade and water content as both will be determined by the judges.

What About the Wax Cappings?

I've heard that it can be such a mess dealing with the wax cappings. The cappings are the wax that is cut off the top of the cells of honey in order to extract the honey. I recently read an 'How To' that sounded so simple I thought I would give it a try.

1. Set the cappings outside and let the bees clean up the extra honey.

I covered an old cookie sheet with a layer of aluminium foil and sort of spread it out. I placed the tray roughly 40 feet from the hives and was hoping to watch the bees do their thing but we left to run errands and ended up being out all day. By the time we returned, not only was every speck of honey cleaned away, but the wax was totally rearranged, separated into a neat layer of wax flakes! I'm not sure if you can see this by the picture, but we were really amazed at how the bees broke down the wax pieces!



Thank you bees for doing such
an outstanding cleaning job!



2. Fill an old crock pot with water and hear the wax on low.

The wax is lighter than the water so will float on top. Once melted, turn off the crock pot. Once cool, remove the wax and pour out the water.

3. Scrape off any impurities from the wax and repeat. The wax will get cleaner with each melting.

If melting old brood comb, they recommend putting the wax in a nylon stocking the first time then squeeze out the excess wax before letting the wax cool.

4. After the wax has been rendered, use a double boiler to melt the wax to  pour into molds.

I'm in the middle of the first melting but it seems to be going very well, it has not been messy at all.

Fall Inspection Today

Seems weird to say the word 'Fall' when its 80 degrees out but it's time to do a full inspection of the hives to ensure we're set up well to make it through the winter. The hives fared hurricane Irene just fine along with the rains from the left over storm that was hurricane Lee but then the east coast has been hit with days and days of more rain. No bees were flying! As a result, the OV hive, which didn't have a feeder on it, fed from their reserves of honey. The Sasha hive fared better because I've been feeding them all along.

The reports on the inspection:

OV HIVE................................................

The OV hive had nearly 4 frames of honey in the super but they are now down to 2 frames with very little honey on them. There is no honey whatsoever in the brood boxes. The hive is full of bees which, to my surprise, were really gentle. They're busy bringing in lots of pollen in white, yellow and orange with lots of waggle-dancing on the frames.

I'm really happy with the queen's brood pattern. Since there is not the usual honey in the corners of the frames, she filling those cells with brood. Most of the brood continues to be in the top two boxes but there is some in the bottom box, too.

I removed the queen excluder and put the top feeder on. Will now concentrate on building up their reserves for the winter.

SASHA HIVE...........................................

Sash II initially had me confused as she's much darker than I knew her to be... almost as dark as Sasha I. (I needed to compare photos once back in the house to make sure I wasn't seeing the old queen!) While Sasha II is certainly different looking you can see that her abdomen has thickened much more since she was last photographed.

The bees still have not yet drawn out the top box! As you can see, the population of the hive is really good but they are concentrated across two medium supers instead of three. The brood is good on a couple of frames and spotty on others because the bees have taken to storing nectar in those vacant cells. That concerns me so will plan to  move a couple of drawn frames from the honey super of the OV hive to the top box next week if the hive doesn't start working drawing out the top box.

As as aside, I'm going to enter some honey in the Charles County Fair next. Wish me, or rather the OV bees, luck!