Making Creamed Honey For Holiday Gifts

This time of year I make Creamed Honey for holiday gifts. I usually make 9 oz hex size jars. The 1/2 lb jars make a great gift without using very much honey. The creamed honey needs to be made by Dec 7 to make sure there is time for it to set.
Making creamed honey adds to the skill of the beekeeper to produce another type of honey product. This is also an entry at the State Fair. It is very easy to do and your friends and family who receive it will greatly appreciate it.

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Our first snow

Now that we are getting dumped on with snow and the hives are not covered yet. There is no reason to panic. Bees will still do nicely in these temperatures. Covering the hives by Thanksgiving weekend is still an option. A person could easily wait that long without stressing out the bees. Fighting the snow depth is another matter if the hives are hard to reach. My plan is still to cover my bees in a week or so.

It is going to cool down

The weather is cooling down so covering the hive at this time would be ok.
It is important to remove any partially filled supers the are on the top of the hive. Partially filled supers left on top of a hive is a fast way to starve a colony come about Jan. The bees will move up following the honey. If they have the misfortune of moving up into a partially filled box of honey the bees will usually starve after it is gone.
For wintering I always make sure the top box is full of honey, my moisture board is on top the inner cover and my black box with a top entrance is on the hive.