Weighing the hive (continued 9) - correcting an exaggeration :o)

In my last post I estimated that it takes more than 300000 trips to collect 1.6 kg. This was under the assumption that one bee takes home about 5 mg. Doing a bit of internet searching I found that this was a somewhat low estimate :o)

Mythbusters have an episode called "1000 Bees" where they test the lifting capability of one bee. They find that the bee could lift 96 mg. Since the mass of the bees was 118 mg it could in fact lift 81% of it own weight. The estimated 5 mg already seems a bit low....

Then I found an useful post on www.quora.com: How much can a bee carry? Three references are quoted and even though I did not check these they do not look like "utter rubbish". The post states typical loads collected by foraging honey bees are:
   30-50 mg of nectar and
   16 mg of pollen (8 mg in each pollen basket on their legs)

Further more the post states that 58% of the bees collect only nectar, 25% collect only pollen and 17% collect both. So the average bee collect:
58% x ~ 45 mg = 26.1 mg
25% x 16 mg = 4.0 mg
17% x (40+16) mg = 9.5 mg
Total =39.6 mg ~ 40 mg

So to collect 1.6 kg it takes "only" 40000 trips and not 320000 trips. Also, a bee is by standard said to weigh 0.1 g (or 100 mg) and will be able to lift about 80 mg according to the Mythbusters test. On average the bee will therefore load itself to about half of its lifting capacity.

Due to the great weather these last few days, I have been weighing the hive daily to see if 1.6 kg corresponds to a typical days work. The "weight loss" per day now looks like this

The last measuring point is just short 2 kg collected in one day (!) which corresponds to 50000 trips. So all in all I will assume that on a day with good weather and plenty of nectar, the bees will take 50000 trips in one day and collect almost 2 kg. In principle it means that a box with 10 frames (size 12x10) will be full of honey (20 kg) in about 1½ week.

No wonder it is called busy as a bee......

Weighing the hive (continued 9) - The season has started

Wow, as I ended my last weighing the hive post, I was just waiting for a few days warm weather for something to happen. The weather has been great for the past 3 days and now things are happening :o)

The total weight of the hive (corrected for the second box added 3 days ago) look like this.

It is clear that the hive is finally gaining significant weight. It is actually so heavy that lifting it with my suitcase scale has become problematic since lift it with fairly straight arms above elbow level :o). Remember that the straight line is the weight loss during the winter months when the bees were sitting in a cluster. Then a bit of fluctuation when the bees start to breed, and the food was scarce before season really gets started.

Now looking at the weight loss per day which was used to ensure that there was food enough during winter, i.e. an increase in mass is negative. The fluctuations during early spring becomes negligible. Keep in mind that this increase in weight is per day which means that the bees have collected almost 1.6 kg in just one day!! I always weigh the bees in the evening so the point represents a full day's work.

One bee collects a few mg per trip - lets just say 5 mg. So to collect 1.6 kg that represents 320000 trips in one day. Isn't that just mind blowing!

Happy Easter to all

Recipe 2: Sack Mead Liquor (cont. 3) - second separation

It bothered me that the temperature did not drop in the mead. By the time I went to bed the temperature was -6C. Then it dawned on me that the stirrer might actually heating up inside the freezer. On the AC/DC adapter it is stated that the output was 18,6 V and 1.1A i.e. 20.5W. That is probably enough to generate a noticeable amount of heat in a freezer. So before I went to sleep I turned the stirrer off.

Opening the freezer this morning the mead liquor looked rock solid, and I measured the temperature to -25C (the freezer was cooling all night). I took it out and stirred it with a spoon, and to my surprise the ice easily broke up and I could stir it into a slurry. This is probably an effect of the initially increased amount of alcohol.

Then I poured the frozen mead into a sieve and collected the liquid. This took a looooong time. I used the IR thermometer to check the temperature of the ice, as the mead liquor was dripping through the sieve. When I had collected about 450 ml the temperature of the ice was about -8C. I will use the temperature to get an idea of when to stop collecting.

The liquid was once again put in the freezer but this time I did not bother with the stirring, just an occasional shake. The initial 100 ml of mead liquor I made was mixed with the batch also, so that the total volume was about 550 ml.

After several hours the temperature mead liquor was -19C at which point I repeated the sieving process. It was now a very smooth slurry. About 50 ml poured straight through the sieve - guess this was quite heavy in ethanol. Then I just collected until I had about 450 ml. i.e. a little less than half the starting volume (200ml from the small scale plus the 800 ml of this upscaled trial). The temperature went from about -18C to -12C. The discarded ice was also collected in a second bottle.



So all in all a little less than half the volume was collected and Sack Mead Liquor. I will leave it for a while to see if get smoother as it ages because it is quite acidic. Also, as expected, the taste of honey has also become more pronounced.

The process of producing the liquor has been quite tedious I will try to get it done in a more simple manner. But for now here is just a picture "from start to end" to create a little atmosphere :o) ...... Cheers.....

Recipe 2: Sack Mead Liquor (cont. 2) - Upscaling

So time to upscale my earlier attempt to make mead liquor by fractional freezing. This time I used just under 800 ml of my Sack Mead so I should end up with about 350 ml give and take, if I can repeat the yield.

I could use a bigger stirring magnet but I just used the small one I have and turned up the rotation to full. I started the stirrer at noon, and at 19 pm about 1/3 of the beaker was full of ice. I took it out of the freezer and stirred it a bit - only nice small  crystals. Super!

I put my sieve in the freezer too to keep it as cold as possible. I was a little surprised when I measured the temperature of the beaker: -10C (with an IR temp device). Measuring the inside surface of the freezer it was -22C, so the liquid was still much warmer than the freezer after 6 hours?


I decided to take off the ice anyway, so that I was rid of some of the water, so I poured the entire beaker through the sieve and collected the liquid in a bowl. Shaking the sieve and letting some of the water melt and drip into the bowl, I guess I could not do much more to minimize the loss of ethanol. Then I poured the content of the bowl into the beaker again, and put it back into the freezer still stirring. I also left the sieve in the freezer to keep the ice from melting when I pour the content of the beaker through the sieve next time. After an hour I did a temperature check: -11.4C. I guess I will have to wait until tomorrow to do the second separation.

I collected the ice in a second bowl, let it melt and collected it in a 0.5 L clean plastic bottle. Just want to see how much ethanol I loose during this process.

Weighing the hive (continued 8) - Expanding the hive

Today (17th of april) I did a check on the hive since yesterday I did my last weighing and the result was odd - or at least not as I expected.

I was expecting the mass of the hive to steadily increase (weight loss to be negative) but to my surprise the hive was loosing weight again.

But when I opened the hive the reason became clear. First of all there was bees everywhere. Last year I counted how many "aisles" were filled with bees (you count the spaces between the plates, and with 10 plates and ends counting as ½ you have max 10 aisles per box). No need to count this year - all aisles were full, very full.

I was quite windy and not so warm, so I just picked a few plates to look at because I did not want to stress the bees too much. Examining the plates it was clear that the bees were breeding. I had larvae and sealed chambers so the queen is definitely still there and she is active. Only the plate furthest from the entrance contained just food. So I removed this plate and introduced a "drone" plate instead. Due to the massive amount of bees I also decided to add a second box with another 10 plates. I did not feel it was a great idea to remove any food, so I substituted one of the new plates with the one I removed from the box on the bottom. I was hoping to see the queen, but due to the massive amounts of bees I did not see her today. Maybe next time.

So why is the hive not gaining weight? Everything that the bees collect is used immediately together with some of the stored food. Even though the result looks like the bees went back into the winter cluster this is certainly not the case. :o)

Now I am just hoping that the bees will soon be able to collect plenty of food. Buds are appearing on all fruit bushes and fruit trees, so a few warm days and the feast can begin.

Weighing the hive (continued 7) - Its gaining weight

Yesterday (Sunday 6th April), while cleaning the house after the baptism which took so long time with the children being bored or crying etc, I did another weighing of the hive during a break - and this is how it looks:

Total mass show a slight increase in weight

The increase does not look that significant but when looking at the weight change per day the the change look much more significant.

Here it is quite obvious that the hive is gaining weight. This means that the bees now have significant amounts of nectar and pollen available to sustain the hive, i.e. the summer started in week 14.

Little Alexanders baptism

This weekend my wife and I held the baptismal party for our little boy Alexander.

63 guests in total, so it was great that we could use the common house by our allotment, (same place as where I have my bee hive) - good food and great company - what more can you wish for

Thanks to all who joined from the happy family!

PS Too bad the mead is not ready yet.....