The ants come marching...and honey harvest

April 2. The ants are back. I've been expecting them and there they were, the first really nice day of April, crawling up the base of the hive and onto the honey combs at the back of the hive. Wanting to know where they were, I opened the hive at the back and saw them on the last two combs with no bees in sight. However, having the colder air entering the hive alerted the bees and one came to the opening. I closed the hive and considered various options to keep ants away; decided to install a moat between the cement blocks. I had developed the idea last fall--it hadn't been implemented because the bees had propolis sealing the hive so ants could not enter easily. But, my opening the hive to remove honey comb had disturbed the seal and allowed entrance to the ants. Three days later the moat seems to be working although weather has been poor and ants haven't been foraging much. Had to add a landing pad below the entrance because bees were falling into the water and drowning...problem solved.


Several days ago two B12 and B13 which were about 2/3 full of capped honey had been removed and stored in the refrigerator, awaiting extraction when grandchildren arrived during spring break. The comb had broken where there was cross combing and the cold refrigerator temperature kept the honey from dripping from the opened cells. We followed directions found online, crushing the comb, placing it in jars so honey would drain through cloth. Worked well and we ended with six cups of very dark, strongly flavored honey; these combs were at the far end of the hive and would have been honey from the final fall foraging. The two bars and fillled combs weighed 5.5 pounds. There were four cups of crushed comb after draining, still quite sticky with honey. That may be placed out for the bees to glean the remainder of the honey or will be washed when wax is rendered later this spring.

While removing B12 and B13, I looked closely at B11 which we knew from hive checks last summer was cross combed with B10. Because of the considerable amount of cross comb, both bars will have to be removed at the same time to keep the comb intact. That will be an interesting exercise because bees will probably be in the cavities and not easy to brush away--will deal with that when it is time.