About two months ago, I started a new backyard beehive, from a captured swarm.
About a month ago, I gave them a second full-depth box, because they were getting a bit crowded, and had nearly filled box #1 - just the frames on the ends had not been filled.
I opened the hive today to check on my girls. Holy cow, they have completely filled box #2. I only checked two frames on the upper box, but they were both packed full of honey, most of it capped (meaning it is ready to be harvested, if desired). A huge population of bees. Huge. I could see clearly that all the frames in that box had been fully drawn into combs.
So, I gave them a third full-depth box of empty frames to fill. I'll open it up again in a couple of weeks and go through the whole hive then (they won't be quite so crowded). I'll probably pull out some of the frames with the best capped honey and extract it so I can re-use the frames - I don't have enough empty frames to give them a fourth box, yet.
Since it's only mid-summer now, this bodes really well for a big honey crop. They will continue to store honey for another couple of months, probably. Sweet.
Sorry, no new pics.
I'm so jealous of you and mk right now. I've helped a friend make mead before, and intend to make my own at some point. However, this has been with store bought honey. Can't imagine how good it must come out with home produced honey.
Thanks :-) I'm planning to try something new this time . A major problem in mead making (especially with all-honey, no fruit meads) is weak fermentation - slow start and takes ages, compared to beer or wine fermentation. To combat this I'm going to use the yeast cake from an ale homebrew for my mead - rack off a finished beer, then simply dump the honey-water mix on to the yeast cake. This will give me a much greater starting yeast population, and I'm hoping, a better, stronger fermentation. I've done it when making stronger beers in the past and it has worked well.
This worked so well that I'm going to do it again, every chance I get; and I'll just make a starter if it's not convenient to make a full batch of beer. FG was ~992, lowest I've ever measured, and it tasted nice on bottling.