Liquid Gold Update

It isn't liquid anymore!

After less than a week in the jar, the mainly oil seed rape honey we extracted last week has already set solid enough for a spoon to stand upright, unsupported in it!  

 

The honey is a pale honey colour.   The texture is smooth and reminds me of Vaseline in the way it half clings to a spoon in a cowlick shape when you scoop some out.  

 

We like the flavour which is mild and floral; not at all what you would expect from the loud and vibrant yellow flowers it’s made from.

 

How much more solid will it get?  I have childhood memories of oil seed rape honey that was so hard it would bend spoons....   Our aim is to eat the honey before it solidifies rock hard and we advise those people to whom we have given jars to try to do the same!

Liquid Gold

 

 

The field next door but one has  oil seed rape in it this year.  These vibrant yellow fields are cultivated for their oil rich seeds and we use this golden, nutty flavoured oil both for cooking and in salads.    The G Bees’ hive entrance faces this field and we noticed that they are making a beeline straight to and from this forage, notwithstanding that the wisteria and pheasant eye narcissi are flowering prolifically closer by in the garden.   The problem with honey made from oil seed rape is that it sets very hard, very quickly.   It can set so hard in the hive that even the bees can’t make use of it.  The Authorities, therefore, recommend extracting oil seed rape honey before the flowers turn from yellow to green, in fact even before the bees seal their stores with wax cappings. 

Noticing that the fields around us are just losing their vibrancy and have a greenish tinge, we organised the hive after this week’s inspection so that the heaviest super containing honey was on the top with a clearer board underneath.  This board allows bees to go down in to the other supers and brood chamber via a kind of no return valve called a Porter Bee Escape but not return to the top super.  (At least that’s the theory; last year, the G Bees glued the Porter Bee Escape open with propolis so they could move both up and down freely!)  

Equipment list for extracting honey

• Wheelbarrow
• sheet
• Extractor
• Oilcloth tablecloths
• Large enamel tray
• Uncapping knife
• STUTBABC (Super that used to be a brood chamber)
• Stool
• 2 x glass jugs
• fine mesh sieve
• honey jars 

 

 

In the morning, there were only 2 or 3 bees in the top super so I whipped it off before the G Bees noticed and put it straight in to the Annex for the honey extraction operation.   This involved spreading 2 large oilcloth tablecloths on the floor to catch spills.   We borrowed a food grade nylon extractor.  First you slice off any wax cappings (using the uncapping knife and large enamel tray). The frames sit in a cage inside the extractor and with minimal effort turning the handle on top, centrifugal force flings honey onto the walls of the extractor from where it dribbles down to the sloping floor via a mesh to catch bits of wax or other debris.  

 

Once the honey is extracted, the wet frames go into STUTBABC until all are empty and then back into the cleaned super to go back on the hive.

I replaced the “wet” frames on the G Bees’ hive immediately after the extraction so they have plenty of space to make more honey – they are bursting at the seams…

After a couple of hours’ settling time, I lifted the extractor onto a small stool, stood a 2 pint glass measuring jug under the tap with a fine stainless steel sieve on top and opened the tap.   Honey glugged out slowly.  I had a moment of concern when the sieve started to fill but nothing passed through but eventually, a thick column of honey oozed through in to the jug.   I had prepared 10 honey jars expecting to get maybe  3 or 4 jars as it's so early in the season but wanting to have some spares ready.  After filling 9, I got two more out of the cupboard but that wasn’t enough and eventually, I filled 14!  

We haven’t heat treated the honey to make it stay runny;   we haven’t “seeded” it by heating it and mixing in honey with crystals of a particular size which is done by some to achieve a creamy set texture:    this is natural honey, as made by the G Bees, just run through a filter.  

 

Game of Thrones

 

This photograph shows one of the frames that came with the G Bees from their old home.  We have replaced it with fresh wax foundation which the bees will draw out into the hexagonal honeycomb cells that you see here.   This photograph of old comb (you can tell by the dark colour) clearly shows the normal size hexagonal cells, where eggs laid by the Queen develop in to worker bees.  Then there the larger hexagonal cells which are where eggs develop in to Drones, the male bees.   Drones are large ‘square’ bees, distinguishable from the Queen who is large but long and thin with a pointed tail.    The large blob on this frame in the red square is a Queen cell.  I draw this to your attention because we have seen lots of queen cells in the G Bees’ hive this year.

 Colonies make new queens for a number of reasons:

i)                  When their queen is getting old.  Ageing queens’ pheromones gradually lose their strength.  Their “smell” is passed all round the colony as the bees feed each other and move around.  When they notice the strength of this smell diminishing they start preparing to make a new queen.  It is said that you can only have one queen in a colony (but once you find “the Queen” who continues to look for another one?) so the new queen will kill off the old one.

ii)                When a colony is big and strong, the natural process for multiplying is swarming. The colony starts making a new queen and before she hatches, the old queen leaves with some of the workers to set up a new colony.  This can happen multiple times from the same colony in one season.

We knew that the G Bees constitute a very large colony and required more space and we didn’t know how old the queen was.   At the first inspection this year we spotted a new Queen.  Queen G was very large and very pale coloured and the new one, named Queen Joan by our weekend guests was dark and stripy.   This implied that Queen G was old and the bees implemented a supersedure process!  I was so pleased that the G Bees knew what they were doing and I didn’t have to go through a “requeening” procedure, which sounds complicated and fiddly.

The G Bees have also successfully moved onto their new deep brood box which is 14” x 12” compared with a normal brood chamber which measures 14” x 8.5”.   They also have additional supers to spread over – these are 14" x  5.5" - but they probably still felt crowded because they clearly wanted to make new queens.  That is why we split the colony into 3 (see the last blog) but this is still a very large colony so I will be taking some emerging brood out to add to and strengthen the nucleus at the next inspection.  The G Bees do have a lot of space and, touch wood, they haven’t decided to swarm yet.

I am feeling very pleased with myself because at the last inspection I marked Queen Joan.  I was nervous about handling her but I used a special little cage that presses in to a frame around her to hold her still, being careful to stick it into honey not brood cells and I blobbed a dot of blue from the special/expensive queen marking pen onto her.

 Will You Rear Good Bees?  This is the mnemonic that helps beekeepers remember the right colour to mark queens according to the year they were born.  Queens born in years ending 1 and 6 are marked White, in years ending 2 and 7 are marked Yellow, in years ending 3 and 8 are marked Red, in years ending 4 and 9 are marked Green and in years ending 5 and 0 are marked Blue. 

So, imagine my surprise when I wrote up my notes afterwards and realised that I had marked a “long, thin, reddish-brown” queen, not a “dark, stripy” queen.  Was it Queen Joan or Queen Joan II?  Is there another queen in there and I just stopped looking after finding and marking Joan II?  I feel with the G Bees that I am running one step behind them all the time and I can’t keep up.  Next inspection I will be looking for multiple queens......