January 23rd. That’s a record for early honey draw at Golden Glow Gardens. No doubt the three capped frames in Hive One’s honey super were a result of having left the bees alone ever since we did a 1-2 frame draw in Spring 2021 and the bees were then robbed of all the rest of their stores.

Looking into the side window I was met with a welcome sight of tons of bees working to fill and cap the outermost frame. There were so many bees, I couldn’t see past them to check how much of this frame was capped.

I caught glimpses of glistening in some cells which tells me the cells are filling with honey, but not yet capped. I’ll definitely leave this frame for the bees to keep working on.

Here is a picture of the honey frames I’m going to harvest seen from the Flow Hive’s back window.

The honey had overwintered and was dark reddish amber in color and delicious with a richness of flavor different from the light spring honey I expect we’ll be drawing in a few months. Can’t wait to see what the bees refill these frames with to compare.

This time, I took two frames of honey and I’ll be keeping vigil closely over the next few days to be sure no robbing takes place.

I believe the reason robbing is more common after a flow hive draw is that honey leaks and pools at the bottom of the honey hive after the draw. Until this gets cleaned up by the bees, it attracts predators.

Speaking of which, during my flow hive inspection, I noticed a lot of ants. While ants aren’t supposed to be harmful to a healthy hive, I am going back to the apiary tomorrow and coating the legs of the bee stand with tanglefoot to keep ants from climbing from the ground to the hives.

This weekend, I also spread diamataceous earth around the base of the bee stand. That also should help keep ants at bay. My original purpose of spreading the diamataceous earth was to repel hive beetles, but all the better if it serves two purposes.