Pouring honey

Just another day with Sunset’s Team Bee. Kimberley Burch, our team’s queen bee, bottles an unexpected honey harvest. We pulled a few frames from Midge, and bottled 32 3 oz. bottles (and ate a fair amount before bottling). Since one frame had enough honey to fill 22 bottles, I guess we ate more than a fair amount. It was delicious—light and fragrant

The girls seem to be doing well. Veronica has a tiny spot of brood of her own, some eggs that may or may not work out (we didn’t see them in the frame—my bad old eyes, I’m afraid, couldn’t pick out the tiny tiny eggs in the cells—and so we hung it from the side of the hive on the frame stand. Maybe too long.) We replaced one of Veronica’s honey-laden frames with a frame of brood and some nurse bees from Midge (who has a good amount of brood).

Califia is steadily filling her top bar hive with comb. Every day at about 4 p.m. there are young bees making orientation flights in front of the hive, flying zig zags as they scope out their surroundings before taking off on foraging trips.