A quiet day, with preparations underway

 Wednesday was another quiet day spent mostly in the garden.

Our canine guest has been doing well, and is slowly integrating in to our pack.  He can be, shall we say, a little over possessive when it comes to his toys, and we have adopted a confiscation tactic to calm things down.  Overall he seems to be settling well. 

We took him for a short walk down the lane with the other three this morning and he behaved well.  He will walk to heel on a lead, but he really enjoyed walking on a longer lead, and checking out the scents in the verges.* 

We also took him for a short run in the car, as he will be having a ride out tomorrow. Again, he behaved perfectly and simply settled and snoozed.

Now moving on to the bees.

I inspected my one queen right hive yesterday and spotted the queen for the first time in three weeks ... phew.  The colony seems to be doing well and there are three supers crammed with honey, and ready for extraction.  

I plan to harvest the honey over the coming weekend and will also be removing another three supers from Hive #2. I haven't bothered inspecting this hive, as, if all has gone to plan, it has a young queen in the process of maturing, mating and taking on her regal role at the heart of the colony. There is little point in intervening in this process, so I'm leaving well alone.

The rest of my day was spent in preparing the store room for honey extraction. My honey extractor was dismantled and the interior was given a damned good scrub. It was cleaned after I last used it, but it needs to be spotless for the production of foodstuffs.

I did the same with the uncapping tray,** and then arranged the various stands and tools to create a compact, and hopefully efficient workspace. My honey sieves have been put through the dishwasher and we just need to get the honey storage buckets clean, before we're ready to go.***

The thought that my profit margin will soar when I'm selling my own honey has not escaped me!

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* and adding his own to the mix!

** The honeybees seal each cell of honey with a capping of wax. These caps need to be cut away before the frames are inserted in to the centrifugal extractor. Uncapping can be quite a messy job and an uncapping tray is a worthwhile investment to make honey harvesting a little easier.

*** That is not strictly true. I need to get spare supers and clearer boards added to the hives, and leave them for a day or two. I then need to remove the filled supers, which will, hopefully, be bee free.  THEN I will be ready to start the extraction. DO NOT get me started on the faffing around once the honey is out of the frames! The clean up is a mission in its own right.