Val's SS journal- Fair food! Yea!

[JRmom]

When I first started making jams I made every single fruit that ripened up here! Needless to say, we did not eat all of it!

I am the same way... right now I have strawberry and blueberry jam, and tangerine, grapefruit, and apple pie pie jelly. And I still want to make tomato jam. We love them all but always end up with too many opened half-pint jars in the fridge. I bought some cute quarter-pint jars the other day so I am going to start using those - less waste. Plus I need to start enforcing my rule... don't open another jar until the last one is finished! :/ We'll see how that works out.

 

[valmom]

Hope that works better for you than it does for us!

 

[keljonma]

I make jams from all the fruits I can find as well. It is rare for anyone to get some of our homemade jam before the Thanksgiving or Christmas baskets are handed out. I also hold back jars to be used as donations when items are needed for auction or raffle.

What I save changes every year. As an example, TR is not fond of 3-citrus marmalade, so last year I only saved about 6 jars. TR's favorite jams are strawberry and grape. Although I think peach is my all-time favorite, I really haven't met a jam I don't like. So we try to keep the opened jams down to 3 or 4 jars. Sometimes we are even successful at it! So I wish you lots of luck with that!

 

[valmom]

I think the only jam I made that I really didn't like the results was pear. Very bland and just tasted like sugar.

We have chickies! The babies I talked my SO into arrived yesterday afternoon. Guess who had to be the one to pick them up since they weren't scheduled to arrive until this morning and I was workin? Right. Guess who spent the entire evening talking to them and showing them the water and getting them set up and already picked out a favorite? (the smallest with a reddish head- named Lucy after Lucille Ball). Right.

 

[valmom]

Pictures of the new girls





They are so stinkin' cute!! I just love the little face muffs

 

[keljonma]

Congratulations on the new cuties! They are adorable. Sounds like your SO has been won over to the dark side!

 

[valmom]

OK, I opened up the hive to see what the girls were up to, and I have a few questions! I didn't see the queen, first of all. And I have a TON of honey- it looks like that's all they are doing. I am astounded at the volume of honey everywhere! I didn't see brood- but the bees were very heavy over a few of the frames and I might not have seen it? I also have a lot of drone cells- the odd shaped ones on the bottom. Should I knock those out or let them be? I also have a lot of ants on the hive- when I took the top cover off they all made a run for it. Should I worry about ants? How would I stop them? (short of putting the hive on blocks in a pool of water.) There was also a dead mouse in the bottom of the hive- I tossed it out. Is it going to be a problem? How do I keep out mice??

When should I start worrying?

 

[keljonma]

I can't remember what your hive set up is, valmom. Do I remember correctly that you have 2 deep hive bodies and 1 honey super for your hive set up? How many frames are filled in the hive body or each hive body?

Bees will store some honey on the brood frames as their pantry and storage for winter. It is possible that your colony is ready for a honey super and if you haven't provided it, they are storing honey in the brood frames.

If you haven't already, I would seriously consider joining your local Beekeepers Association and attending meetings; you will also most likely be able to meet a beek willing to be your mentor. Maybe that beek that held the original classes you attended? If you haven't been watching the hive activity, a local beek would be a good place to ask about the local nectar flow.

If you check the frames for eggs and small larvae as well as capped brood, you can tell the health of the queen and the colony. If it looks like there is a steady coverage of the frame with various stages of brood cell, I would not worry about not seeing the queen. But it is important to check the frames for eggs... I occasionally used a bee brush to remove bees to inspect a frame.

A colony will have about 100 or so drones in the hive during summer, so I would leave the cells alone if you are sure they are drone cells. Of course, if you have an entire frame of drone brood, it could be your queen has been replaced by a laying worker. A worker is a non-fertile bee that can only lay drones.

For ants, you can sprinkle ground cinnamon on top of the inner cover and around the hive. You can also place Queen Anne's Lace flowers on top of the inner cover. Ants don't like either. Both will need reapplied. The honeybees in their housecleaning will remove them. And, of course, ground cinnamon around the hive would need reapplied after heavy dew or any rain.

ime and in reading, mice usually don't head for the hives until the weather gets colder. I would guess the mouse went in for a bit of honey and the bees attacked and killed it. But reinbeau who beeks in MA and ME would have better insight about that in your region. A metal mouse guard entrance cover, which has holes that a honeybee can get through that a mouse cant, if fairly inexpensive insurance for keeping mice out of the hive.

 

[valmom]

Thank you or your expertise. I really do feel the lack of experience just in what I am seeing and not seeing! I am pretty sure that what I am seeing are drone cells, and I'm inclined to leave them since I have been told that mites prefer drones to the girls and that is one way to keep them off the girls. (?)

There seems to be a lot of honey, but it may just be that I don't know how much of anything I should have in there - I have 2 deeps that I am leaving to the bees. I will put the queen excluder on top and add a honey super (a medium that I have). I have 10 frames per hive body and they have built out about 6 of them in the bottom and 3 to 4 of them in the top. It didn't seem ready for a honey super since it wasn't really built out all the way yet.

 

[valmom]

More bee questions! I am thinking I need a new queen- I haven't seen any brood being produced- I have big empty spaces where it used to be and hatched out. I do have drones- I can spot them, and I might have laying workers? but I don't know. And the girls are very mad- not as easy going as they used to be. So I am thinking I am queenless. The hive is still honey heavy- several frames are built out entirely with honey. And there are lots of bees, so they didn't swarm.

I actually juggled things enough to get pictures this morning. If anyone can look at these and tell me what you think? New queen? Too late in the season? Bees too old to wait for a new queen?

This one I see drone cells being made- and the top 2 in the middle of the hive have pupae in them. Laying workers?


This is one of the frames that used to have brood in the middle- it is empty and cleaned out.


This is another- don't know what is in the center cells- pollen?


And this is what most of my frames look like