Sneak Peek: Honey!

I went out to do a thorough hive inspection today. I have been a little concerned about the bees because they seem to bunch around the opening after inspections, so I was thinking that they were maybe too crowded in just two medium boxes. A bunch of the folks I know in the San Mateo Bee Guild attended a class where the instructor suggested putting a new box on the bottom instead of the top so that the returning foraging bees have more space to come inside. So I put one more brood box on each hive - I put Thistle's on the bottom and Mint's on the top just to see if it made any difference (looks like it didn't):

I also put a top entrance on Thistle so they have more places to enter the hive (you can see them clustering around a small hole at the top, that's their new entrance).

Mint also built a lot of burr comb up in their feeder, so I took that out. It was filled up with nectar and honey, so I decided to try to bottle it. Here is the smashed honey comb with honey in my filter, the honey is dripping down through the filter into a cup, leaving all the wax and gunk out:

And here is the final product! Honey! It is very light in color because it probably has very high water content. The bees put nectar into the comb and fan it to evaporate the water. When the honey has the right water content, the bees cap the honey comb. Most of the honey that I took was uncapped, so it probably has more water than it should, it is still delicious though (this is about 1/2 cup of honey):