Whatcha doing today?

[addy1]

Made 4 blueberry pies with the blueberries I picked yesterday! A quart per pie sure look good and smell good! To hot to taste test!

 

[addy1]

Pulling honey supers.............exhausted! Still 5 large hives to go
Also around 10 supers in the basement

 

[addy1]

We moved around 600 lbs of honey today

A perfect frame of honey! Two of our hives each gave us 4 supers with 10 frames per super of perfectly drawn out honey

A full box of fully drawn and capped honey frames, around 60 lbs.

Now extraction starts................ for days and days

We pull the frames, put them into coolers, brushing any clinging bees off, then put the frames back in boxes for extraction.
Each cooler is around 100 plus lbs depends on how many frames it holds. I wait until evening to move the frames by then the bees in the boxes are drunk on the honey and calm. Open the coolers and they fly home.

The load in the basement need to bring them upstairs.

The tubs are non filled honey frames, the packages (new bees this year) some did great some did nothing. They go right into the freezer, then put back into boxes and saved until next year. Freezing kills the wax moths, hive beetle eggs.

Any partial filled frames end up on the table waiting to dehydrate enough to extract. The moisture content needs to be around 17%

 

[Mike in Vermont]

So, you don't heat up the honey comb to separate it from the wax?

 

[addy1]

So, you don't heat up the honey comb to separate it from the wax?

No drawn comb is gold to a bee keeper. We cut off the caps, extract the honey, by spinning. Then put the frames out for bees clean up, there is always a lot of honey drips left. They get every bit of honey off the cells. Then we freeze the frames put back in the boxes store in our basement with door screen over the top box to keep out the wax moths. Put back on the hives in the spring around 4/1

 

[JamieB]

That would give the bees a jump start next honey season, the frames already have their cells.
I’ve got to hurry and finish waking up, get dressed, and go see how bad the road is. Might be flooded in, we’ve had a lot of rain. While my body would enjoy getting to go back to sleep, my wallet wouldn’t be happy missing days at work.

 

[JamieB]

5:30pm and I’m ready to go to bed! Sweat my tush off at work today, blaster went down, so we are a bit behind, and I was shoveling shot that’s spilled out along with two of the other guys. It was hot hard work.

 

[addy1]

finished the main part of the harvest, darn hands hurting bad now. They don't even like touching the keyboard...............the rest needs to dehydrate get it down to around 17% moisture.

 

[addy1]

Came over to our boat. 30 minutes out tornado warnings, saw this

Rained so hard we could not see the road, did not want to stop under all the trees along the road that could come down.

We made it! whew one scary drive.

The next day raining so finished the last counter in the bedroom

before

after

Then a nice window of weather. Braved all the boats out in the bay and took our little (21 foot stingray) out. We almost made it to the bridge but then small craft warnings came up, so we turned around and put the boat away.

Today everybody takes their boats out to party and watch the fire works we will watch what we can see from our docked big boat. A lot of drunks coming back to the docks in the dark. Safer sitting here.

Happy July 4th to all! May you be safe!

 

[Jhn]

@addy1 we have been getting some severe t-storms around Annapolis this week, sky turns pitch black, and can hear the rain coming and see a big white cloud moving across the water bringing visibility to zero.

Smart staying at the dock to watch the fireworks in Annapolis, it is going to be crazy the amount of people out there this year after not having it last year. we used to supply the barges for the Annapolis fireworks for a looooong time, it was always a mad house out there. A lot of people driving boats around that shouldn’t be in a very small area.

Up the Severn river from Annapolis in round bay a community (Sherwood Forest) shoots off fireworks on July 3rd (just as big as the Annapolis fireworks on the 4th) the whole river was filled with boats last night to watch them looked like bumper to bumper traffic on 95 out there. We hang/party at my parents beach where I grew up on July 3rd, which has a great view of the fireworks, so I don’t have to deal with the drunk boaters out there. I avoid Annapolis on the 4th now, way to match traffic for me down there.

 

[TheFishGuy]

Happy fourth all!

 

[GBBUDD]

I use to go to Boston every year with a 12 foot john boat. id throw it on the lumber racks of the truck and put the boat in in the parking lot of a pizza joint along the Charles river. We would stay inches from the shore line the 2 mile trip down to the esplanade We would pull up right on shore park under a tree and listen to the Boston pops what a day it always was. What i enjoyed the most about it was the big boats that came in with the clueless people. they would drop anchor and go for a swim. Now for anyone who knows there Rock and Roll there's a song by Stepping Wolf "Love that dirty water". Well that song is about the CHARLES RIVER and i just couldn't stand it any more one year watching these two girls that were higher then high maintenance as they were swimming not getting the hair wet but sinking down to take a mouthful of water and make like a fountain. I drifted over toward them and droped my anchor down to the bottom and jigged it a couple times. I started to pull it up and one of the girls said eww what's that's swell , i told her it was rock and roll history . ohhhh if Pandora had only been around then i would have started to play the song. Well they both looked at me with annoyance and a puzzled look as i told them it was the bottom of the Charles river and who knows maybe someone will make a song about them next. Well you never saw two girls swim so fast to get out of the water. AS they got out they were doing some sort or what looked like an Irish jig. we didn't worry about the drunks we were always inches from shore but it might have well have been miles from the crowds.

 

[GBBUDD]

Happy fourth of July

 

[j.w]

Just hanging out at at home. Think we will have some hot dogs and watch the neighbors shoot off fireworks.

 

[addy1]

@addy1 we have been getting some severe t-storms around Annapolis this week, sky turns pitch black, and can hear the rain coming and see a big white cloud moving across the water bringing visibility to zero.

Smart staying at the dock to watch the fireworks in Annapolis,

No kidding about the storms, we drove over in the one on Thursday, never want to do that again, 3 inches of rain fell here at the boat, sat through another on Saturday, which was shorter.

We had a perfect view from the front of the boat. Watched all the boats leave to watch them watched them come back. Can't believe all the paddle boards that went out and came back in the dark.

Got a few pics hard to focus a phone camera on a rocking boat, our view was perfect!