A bit more activity around the house today.  Robin got in a few trees today.  She got her Sourwood and her Sassafrass.  The Sourwood is for the bees and should give a good flavor to their honey.  She got the Sassafrass for making Sassafrass soda.  We did get a free Red Maple as well, but we are not sure where to put it as it gets pretty big later in life.  We have it in a pot now and will contemplate this for a while.

I opened up our hive after feeding the girls more syrup.  They have pretty much filled up the first Western box so I put another on top and moved the feed up.  The picture looks like is has three boxes, but the feeder jars are inside the top box.

Another thing we did this year was to put the base on legs.  Our bee club president, Brian Johnson, suggested this as well as putting the legs in small cups with some oil in them to discourage ants.  It seems to be working very well.

I also got my last box of shallows finished up and just need to lay up the foundation on my remaining ten western frames that will go into the feeder box on top once the nectar starts flowing in a couple months.

I finally racked off my mead.  The two older ones were getting very clear so I racked them into new glass carboys and then racked off my newest batch into a glass carboy.  Here is a pic robin took of me doing this:

Easy gravity flow going here.  I have the new carboy down below and draw out the mead from the upper container.  I'll check on things in a week or so and then likely will try out the Sparkaloid on the oldest batch to see how it works.  In the meantime, I went down to Costco.  I like the store, but darn them, they changed over to Kirkland brand clover honey.  Not a bad thing, but they are in 5 pound containers at the same cost as the 6 pound ones!  Grrr...  Well I got 15 pounds and will crank up a new batch tomorrow after giving the plastic carboy a good cleaning.  That will bring up my stock to twenty gallons and near the half way goal.  I am excited about this as it will be a yearlong commitment to this project.  If it works out, I plan on doubling my output next year.  I just need to consider what to do with all the end product.  While I love the stuff, it is much more than I will use.

I'll give it some thought.  I have entertained a notion or two of going into business making metheglin, but from what I can tell, the desire for this is not great in the market right now.  Time will tell and I have that.

Grey skies outside, but still a beautiful day.  I have been out quite a bit.  How about you?