Today was the first time that we made cut comb from our hives.

First I cut the comb out of the wooden frame.

Then I used a special cutter to slice up the comb.

And carefully, into the box…

… it goes. Some people drain their comb before boxing it up, but we decided that extra honey was the way to go.

Just look at that golden deliciousness! This is a messy, sticky process – the best bit is mopping up with fresh bread at the end.

This weekend we will be taking honey from both our home hives. The main nectar flows have slowed right down now and we need to start reducing the sizes of the hives so that by the autumn they will be compact and able to keep warm through the winter.  We like to keep the honey from each hive separate, so today it was hive #2.

I put special clearer boards under the super on the hive last night and by this morning most of the bees had moved down into the super below. I used the brush to gently remove the few stragglers before I took the box inside – we really don’t want a load of angry bees helping with the extraction!

Today’s honey was really dark and has a wonderful flavour. I’m looking forward to seeing what it looks like after it has settled and been bottled.

Last night we bottled the honey that we extracted earlier in the week.

We filled some of these 1oz jars, which look really sweet – they’d make great party favours.

It is interesting to see the difference in colour between this honey and the batch from our other hive from the start of the month. They taste quite different too. The jar on the right is this lot.

Today we were thrilled that we were able to take some frames of honey from our hive #1. It tastes delicious and quite different from the honey we took earlier in the month from hive #2. It is amazing that even though the hives sit just a few metres apart the bees must have been foraging on different plants to create the difference in flavour.

It is now filtering and then we’ll let it stand for a couple of days before bottling it.

I glanced out of the window earlier and was alarmed to see thousands of bees in the air. My first thought was “SWARM!” and raced up to the roof to look at the hives. (I have absolutely no idea what I thought I was going to do though…)

When I got there I realised that rather than swarming – where all the bees pour out of the hive, the opposite was happening – all the bees were racing into the hives. About 10 seconds later there was an enormous crack of thunder and torrential rain began.  I must have seen all the foragers dashing for cover before the storm began! These tiny creatures really amaze me.

Within a couple of minutes of the rain slowing they were back out, hard at work again.

Each time we inspect our hives we gently remove any wax comb that the bees have built where we don’t want it. We have been saving this wax and filtering it in our solar wax extractor to remove any debris.

We have finally collected enough to make our own candles.

The smell is amazing!