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I've been keeping this blog for all of my beekeeping years and I am beginning my 19th year of beekeeping in April 2024. Now there are more than 1300 posts on this blog. Please use the search bar below to search the blog for other posts on a subject in which you are interested. You can also click on the "label" at the end of a post and all posts with that label will show up. At the very bottom of this page is a list of all the labels I've used.

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I began this blog to chronicle my beekeeping experiences. I have read lots of beekeeping books, but nothing takes the place of either hands-on experience with an experienced beekeeper or good pictures of the process. I want people to have a clearer picture of what to expect in their beekeeping so I post pictures and write about my beekeeping saga here.Master Beekeeper Enjoy with me as I learn and grow as a beekeeper.

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Monday, May 26, 2014

Robbing Peter to Pay Paul and the Taste of Honey

The front hive at Tom's house is desperately queenless, so on Thursday I went over to Stonehurst Place to steal a frame of brood and eggs from one of the deep boxes over there.  The new Ray Civitts hive was looking good and needed a new box.  I checkerboarded them top box into the new box and then went into the lower box.



I put the beautiful frame of mostly eggs and young brood into a pillow case and put it in the back of my warm car (it was 87 in Atlanta that day).  I drove to Jeff's office and picked him up to go to Tom's.  We opened the hive.  

Inside the hive, the frames had some brood but it was all drone.  I think after the swarm the queen must have either been short bred (a Keith Fielder term meaning that she only mated with a couple of drones - not enough to allow her to function as a good layer).  Anyway we pulled a frame from the bottom box that had a baseball sized circle of drone brood in the center.  The rest of the frame had all the worker cells back-filled with nectar and there was honey at the corners, as is typical in a brood frame.  

We added the beautiful Stonehurst brood/egg frame to the hive.  I am crossing my fingers that they will now be able to make a successful queen.  

Jeff and I couldn't resist sticking our finger hive tool into the corner of the frame to taste the honey.  Yum - it had a sweetness followed by a spicy end note - delicious.  We didn't have anywhere else to put the frame, so I put it in the back of the car to take home.


I let Jeff out at his office and he went in to tell the staff that we had a taste of honey in the car.  At least six people came running out of the building brandishing spoons!  I didn't get the camera up and running fast enough.  





All six of them had a taste.  Jeff works at a casting agency and they know how to have fun!  All of them enjoyed the honey adventure, I think.  And I had a great time sharing our honey moment with them as well.

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