2010-12-29 Metropolis - chock full!

 Time to check Metropolis again, a couple of weeks since the last check, and the top 2 boxes were already filling up with honey last time...

Cracking the top box.

 Albina, Jazmina's mum was over, and had been thinking of getting her own hives going,
so I thought I'd get her in amongst the bees...
 The hive mat was welded down.
 The top box is chock full of capped honey, nearly all completely capped.
Albina lends a hand. 
 Beautiful golden glow...
 Albina, enjoying it. No fear, her mum used to keep bees when she was younger.

There was loads of  burr comb between the two honey boxes,
we scraped it all up into a container for tasting later.

This liquid gold we got out of here is still nectar, really,
off uncapped cells that they constructed in a freestyle manner
(without applying for the relevant planning permits).
It tastes nice, a bit smokey
 (from the smoke that we had to use to get the bees out of the way),
and quite runny. Hot day, too.
 After we took off the burr comb, we went through the middle box,
lots of capped honey in there, too, but maybe not enough to harvest just yet.

a couple of weeks ago this box still had a lot of brood in it, not any more,
they had all hatched, and their cells used for storing nectar.

In the brood chamber, very full, no sign of disease,
lots of eggs and grubs , but we did not see the queen.

Overall, we really need to harvest some honey to make room,
putting another box on top would make it too hard to manage at that height....

Need to borrow a spinner from somewhere...

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