The observation hive has continued to dwindle over the past month with no obvious reason for the loss in population. It went from having more than three full frames covered with bees to less than half of a frame. I'm suspicious that the cause may be the warmth of the store. I keep the store at about 70 degrees. Possibly the bees are flying out when it is much to cold and are failing to make it back to the hive. Most of the population loss occurred when we had a week or more of cold weather before Thanksgiving.
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| On October 16 there are 3 full frames of bees |
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| After Thanksgiving the bees have dwindled down to less than one full frame |
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| Queen Nora the First on December 6th with her few remaining minions |
I was so hopeful the bees would do better wintering in the observation hive this time. You would think a warm and dry location with an unlimited food supply would be just the ticket. Maybe this is just like children. It is not helpful when you do too much for them. I feel like I need to make a black velvet cover I can drape over the whole observation hive after the last bee is dead. It is an Italian funeral custom to hang black drapes over the door for a period of time following a death. I observed this many years ago while serving as a LDS missionary in Northern Italy. This particular hive of bees were part Italian after all.
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| 1,060 pounds of unfiltered beeswax |
On a happier note, I finally finished the big beeswax rendering project on Saturday, December 6th. My good friend Quentin started this project while I was on vacation in late October. Together we processed a grand total of six 55 gallon drums of cappings which resulted in 1,060 pounds of unfiltered beeswax. All of this was done with my little Walter Kelly Cappings Melter. Now I just need to melt the whole lot into one pound bricks so it will be in a convenient form to sell. We definitely won't run out of beeswax this year.
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