Second Extraction of Honey

We were surprised to find the bees have been packing away a lot of nectar and converting it to the sweet tasting honey.  With the signs of nicer warm and sunny days, those amazing bees are hard at work flying around in search of the many nectar sources.  Bees often fly past many nectar sources to take advantage of their new found pot of gold premium nectar source.  Bees have a preference in taste just as humans do and will choose one nectar source over many others available.

Here's a little video of the bees working on the frames to pack in the nectar, reduce the moisture levels, and eventually place a light cap of wax over each cell once the honey is perfect.

One hive has out performed the other as the second hive wasn't happy with their queen's laying and population growth.  So they decided to supercede that queen by creating a new queen cell.  After 2 weeks, there was a capped queen cell that was very close to having the new queen emerge.  Another two weeks or more, the new queen will have emerged, taken her mating flight, and then returned to the hive, toured the hive to map it out and then she begins her duties to begin laying and working on increasing the colonies numbers.  On inspection, we were happy to find she is doing fantastic and laying like crazy. Queens generally lay about 1500 eggs a day in their first year. In their second year they are at their peak and hit about 2000 or more eggs a day.  This makes for quick population growth and as a beekeeper, we have to always monitor the colony growth and make sure the colony doesn't get over crowded and lead to possible swarms.

See the picture below and see our new queen in the bottom lower right corrner of the picture.

Find the second batch of honey at Calabogie Peaks Resort available starting Sunday late afternoon.

Aug. 27/17 approx. after 4:30pm.