No stings this week

On Sunday, I added on a "super" which, if you haven't been following the entire time, is a smaller box..about 6 inches high.  It also contains 10 frames.  This super, when it's filled, is my honey.  All the honey below is for feeding the bees. So they have two deep hives now.  One for brood.  The next one up is for their honey.

So it's quite exciting to be adding a super at the end of June.  Of course, I have nothing to compare it with, but it feels good to me. It took the second box about 3-4 weeks to fill up.  It looked packed with honey today and beautiful white comb.


I then took a peek at the bottom hive and pulled out just one frame...trying to limit my time there to 10-15 minutes.  I feel like I flew through this inspection and wished I had time to inspect more.  Next time, I'll look at the bottom hive first and give that a better inspection and make sure I still have a queen and eggs.

I certainly know the bees have filled the second deep hive because I could barely lift it!  For certain, next year, I will go with all the 6" boxes.  I'm already thinking of expanding my hives next year. I'd like to keep two going next season.

 This shot was taken Sunday after adding the super.  The bees are all outside here 1) because I disturbed them (although less than last week) and 2) it was very hot and they were cooling off.  I also removed the entrance reducer so they could have the entire space to come in and out of the hive.  Notice that the cover doesn't look entirely closed.  That's because I propped it open to allow more venting inside the hive.  When you see the bees outside like this, they are either very hot or they are about to swarm.  I'm not at risk of swarming right now so they were hot.  And I gave them more space with the addition of the super.

A side note on candlemaking.  Yesterday, I tried my hand at making dipped beeswax candles.  I had some leftover beeswax from another project and thought it would be enough to make a few candles.  Because I didn't have a vessel tall enough to make longer tapers, I ended up with these 4-5" inch candles...two sets about 3/4" wide.  And two sets of 4-5" 3/8" wide size.  I was anxious to just try this and see how it would go.  I thought I did fine for my first time.  But the telling will be when I actually burn them.  On the two larger width candles, I used fishing weights to ensure the wick was perfectly straight when hanging.  On the two smaller ones, I didn't use the weights because they were all mucked up with wax.

You really need the weights as you can see from this photo of my new candles.  I'll let you know how they burn.  I may need to make adjustments to my technique...in fact, I'm certain of it. I saw that someone else used bolts for their weights and that seemed like a good idea. Just tie them on to the bottom of the wick and reuse them over and over again.

I'll add some photos of the now taller hive as well as my cheap patio project soon.