We decided to use the bee escape screen (my new favorite thing!) to squish the bees in the small hive into one deep hive box. The next day we moved the small hive on top of the big hive, separating them with a single sheet of newspaper. Now we wait! We will leave the hive this way for about a week so that they can get used to each other. Since we are already a bit behind schedule we started feeding them as well — a 2:1 sugar syrup with Honey B Healthy. Hopefully, when we open up the hive at the end of the week, they will have eaten the newspaper and will be successfully combined. Then it will be time to get the girls all settled for the winter. If all goes as planned, we will use the bee escape one more time to get the hive down to a normal two deep box size with at least one box full of stored honey for the winter.

We have our fingers crossed!

The extraction went off without a hitch. Fortunately, this year we discovered one of the greatest inventions ever for small-time beekeepers. Last year we used a fume board and honey robber to get our honey off the hive and I felt terrible about doing it. I was looking forward to trying Fischer’s Bee Quick this year (they were out of stock last year) but instead we found the bee escape screen. It is basically a triangular maze attached to a board and covered with wire mesh. The bees exit the honey supers through the maze and then are unable to find their way back up. It works great and better yet is organic, fairly quick (it takes about 24 hours) and very bee friendly!

We want to say thanks again to everyone who helped out this year! It makes a sticky project so much easier and lots of fun!

We’ll be up and running soon enough!