I Am Not Hamlet

Wear contacts. Oh, I can't express the ease that wearing contacts brings. Instead of having glasses slip off my sweat-slicked face and causing me to clumsily put them back on while keeping my veil on, I now have no such problem. Thanks Mr. (or is it Ms./Mrs.?) contact lens inventor. The bees? Oh, one hive is exploding and I should easily harvest 30+ pounds of honey next month. The other hive? Not so good. But batting .500 is fantastic.

I'm glad you asked. Lookee here. Also included in each cage is a can of sugar syrup that the bees feed on during travel. This can is probably 24 oz. or so, but I'm not sure if that's included in the weight. I believe 3 pounds of bees means somewhere between 10 and 15,000 bees. Here the cage is opened, and the can is removed, just prior to shaking them all out. Yes, I wrote "shaking." You shake the bees out, but their bodies have been sprayed down with my own sugar water concoction to limit the flying around. The queen cage is outside of the shipping cage sitting on top of the frames. It's the bee-covered shape with the white, plastic strap hanging off of it. Here's what it looks like after about 1/2 of the bees have been shaken out onto the open super. After a sweaty and nerve-wracking job (Crap! Are they going to be gentle or pissed when I shake them out?) here's the hive shut up tight with some grass plugging up the entrance to give them so...

I went to check on my lone beehive (down from two in previous years) only to find them queenless! Auuugh! The weather has been mild and dry to hot and dry this summer so I imagine the nectar flow has not been the best. They should have at least close to 60 pounds of honey by this time--I estimate they have about 45. This is very frustrating. They are raising their own queen, she's capped right now, but I fear that will be too little, too late. So much for an empire of honey this year. On the off chance that any other beekeepers come across this ( I feel like a beehaver) how has your summer been?