We're going to have HONEY!!
Grace and I have been peeking into the hive every ten days or so, and while we noticed a few more bees in the honey super, they didn't seem to be actually doing anything up there.
Until yesterday when we opened the hive and saw this ...
The girls were clearly hard at work in the honey box, and we were delighted to find they are steadily drawing out comb and filling it with liquid gold.
I find the honey making process to be fascinating. Basically the bees gather nectar and bring it back to the hive for processing by other bees. If I understand it correctly, these other bees mix the nectar with enzymes in their little bee bodies and then deposit the mixture into the comb. At this point, it's not yet honey. Instead, it's simply a very wet nectar syrup of sorts. The bees then fan the open comb with their wings until the water content gets down to around 17%. How do they know it's 17%? Well, back in the old days, it was a hassle for them to measure the humidity, but now there are any number of very accurate hygrometers that can be picked up on Amazon rather inexpensively.
I have no idea how they know, but they know. The wonder of nature and all. And now that the mixture has been evaporated down to 17% water content, voila - it's honey!
Once the bees get it to honey, they cap the comb with wax to keep it securely stored.
You can see they've started capping this frame.
Next step is for us to wait until they've filled and capped all the frames in the honey box, and then it's harvest time. No idea how long that will take, but boy would it be cool to have fresh honey for my herf later this month!