Guess what time of year it is??!! Time to purchase a package of bees and try our hand at beekeeping again. Last year was a huge fail, in case you dont remember...we bought a package of bees and they all flew away in less than 48 hours. Tried again with round 2 and the bees stayed about 72 hours and built a tiny honeycomb. Bees can be so frustrating!
We decided we were done for 2014 and we would try again in 2015. So here we are! a couple weeks into owning bees again and so far so good. The weather has been a little iffy (cold, then warm, then cold again) but the bees have decided they like it enough to stick around which we are super glad about. Here are some pictures of Tony working with the bees.
Bee suit on, getting his gloves on next
The geese are attracted to another white shape just like them
We have a top bar hive so the slats on top are just wooden bars the bees can build their honeycomb off of. We left the queen in her little box for a few days with a cork blocking where she is supposed to get out instead of having a piece of candy there. The bees go where the queen goes and we didnt want the queen flying off, never to see her or our bees again.
Here Tony is checking on the queen but first has to brush away some bees that were on her little cage with a dry paintbrush. You can see here that the third bar in on the right has a small honeycomb started on it.
Tony got my camera and grabbed this shot of the bees working on a bigger piece of honeycomb. It's a fairly decent size but you cant see it because all the bees are on top of it.
If you click the picture to make it bigger, you will see a chain of bees.
Super crazy!
I decided it was time to get a safe distance back and Tony finished working on the bees and put all the bars back.I'm glad that they didnt try to go after him or sting him.
Do you keep bees or know someone who does?
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