Let the Bees Do the Clean-up

Recently I harvested some honey from our #2 hive, the one we inherited as an ongoing concern.  The colony was fairly strong and, due to the absence of its owner, was somewhat aggressive when approached, especially during and after the move.  I'll share an observation about how we calmed them down, but first this:

I might have mentioned that I got a 2-frame extractor for my birthday this year, so getting to the honey was a fairly simple job.  At the end of a couple of hours' work, though, a person is left with a sticky mess to clean up.  The extractor drum is covered with stickiness that there is no hope of you getting into a jar.  The frames and what's left of the foundation is just — well — sticky.  A friend, who has been around commercial beekeepers and has had his own hives, suggested putting all the equipment and empty frames outside the hives and let the bees clean everything up.  Brilliant!  I thought, and so that's just what I did.


Within a couple of days the Bees had returned to the hive all the honey and pollen that I could do nothing with.  All that was left was a small pile of wax the bees deemed unusable.  I put everything out by the hives after dark, so as not to stir up an almost literal hornets' nest around the beehives.  By the next day around lunchtime, when everything had warmed up, just about half the population of our number 1 and 2 hives (thousands of bees) was out doing clean-up duty on the equipment.  It was quite a sight to see.

Now all the equipment needs is a good wash and dry, and it will be ready to store.

I'll share later what we did to calm down the feisty hive.  Suffice it to say, it work perfectly.

Here's a link to a fun-looking site entitled "Beekeeping Like a Girl."  My girls are interested in our hive activities, so I'm guessing some other young ladies would enjoy seeing this site.  Take a look:

http://beekeepinglikeagirl.com/5-creative-beehives/