On Saturday, July 19th, I put out my centrifuges/frame spinners, cone tank, and the honey wax cappings bin for the bees to rob. Within the hour, there was a fury of bees on the cappings trying gathering all of the honey that was left on them. They were knocking off big chunk of wax off of the grate. I don’t think that the bees keep any secrets from their sisters when they find honey. Unfortunately, when you let bees rob, there is some aggression between the bees and a few bees lost their lives during that. I don’t like that, and I think that there could be a better way, I haven’t found it yet, especially when it comes to removing the last of of honey from the wax capping but will continue to look for a better solution.
In the evening while I was bringing in the equipment, I saw that little ants on one of the centrifuges and there was a single honeybee remaining inside, or I thought. As I reached in to try to shoo the remaining bee I felt a pain near the outside of my armpit. I said to my husband, “I was hit!”. Yes, I was stung. Just another new strange location to put down on my sting locations, outer armpit. What are the other ones; back of hip/bum area, wrist, middle finger, heal of my foot (after wearing my sneaker for 15 minutes), and lastly, my favorite one, belly button. I sure there will be new spots in the future, but I hope not many.
On July 21st, While I was finishing cleaning out the centrifuges/honey frame spinners, and my cone tank from the honey harvesting that we did on July 4th, a flock of barn swallows came in. There were about 20 or 30 of them. I know that they eat insects, including honey bees, so I ran inside and grabbed my purple umbrella with white polka dots, hoping that the automatic opening feature would deter them. No, it didn’t. I just started waving it around and tossing it in the air, but I fear I was too close to the ground. I hear my husband asking his phone to play hawk sounds, which is kind of ironic, because we have had hawks nesting close to our house this year, which none were around that time. I found a loop to play a red tail hawk sound, yet, the swallows still flew above us until their bellies were full. I just wanted to deter them from my bees. They can eat all of the mosquitos, ticks, deer flies, and other nuisance insects out there, just not my bees over my house. Please don’t get me wrong, barn swallows are a very beneficial birds. Yet, honestly, I just don’t like seeing that amount of birds picking off my bees.
Otherwise, other that trying to keep up with my bee chores, it has been quiet at Higganum Hillside Honey. Thank you for reading, bee kind, and text me at the number listed on this website if you interested in honey. I will leave you with a few videos of the bees taking/robbing the honey we left behind.
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