-
swarm capture
Today turned out to be pretty exciting after all. Around 10:30 I received a phone call from Michelle, Ken’s wife, asking if I wanted to come help capture a swarm. I would say I didn’t do much ‘helping’ – but it was amazing to be there. Here you see Steven sizing up the situation. He’s considering his options for capture. He’s placed a hive box under the swarm on the ground, and now the options for getting them into the box are being pondered. It didn’t take long – I had the camera ready to show the process, but by the time I took the picture it was over: He…
-
ouchie
Somebody got stung on Monday when we were out inspecting the bees. The bee had crawled up her sleeve and found it a bit too claustrophobic and threatening, so she ended up with a sting. No big deal, that’s what the pennies in my pocket are for..
-
hanging out
This pic is a bit blurry, but it captures the moment. These bees are connected to each other by their legs, forming a chain that bridges the gap between the two frames. This was after I had completed the inspection and was putting the frames back into their proper places, I noticed the gap at the end had a pile of bees forming chains. I’m not exactly sure why they did this, but I suspect it has a lot to do with the large gap that was left with the frame missing. If you squint a bit you can also see the bit of wax that are leftovers from the…
-
bees and kids
It was nice to have friends along on our trip out to the beeyard yesterday! My girls have been very interested in the bees, and I think this has rubbed off on their friends. We all went out for the inspection, and they were able to see the queen, workers, honey, pollen, brood, and eggs. We also saw some workers with pollen in the pollen sacs on their hind legs. We didn’t notice any drones, though, which was a bit disappointing because my girls have been asking me if they can hold one ever since I came back from the beekeeping course in Guelph and told them about my drone-holding…
-
all is well
The populations of the hives seem to be expanding – I think I’ve got bees now that were eggs when I bought the frames. The time it takes for the worker bees to develop, from egg to worker, is about 21 days, so that makes sense. The visit today went well. The mistake I corrected last time seems to have been taken in stride by all the lovely ladies in the hives. I noticed that the honeycomb I uncapped and scraped off a bit has now been re-capped, and everything fits better. In the hives I saw eggs, larvae, capped brood, and one queen. The other queen was hiding from…
-
oops
Some people have to learn the hard way. I didn’t think I was one of those people, but apparently this time I am. In the beekeeping course I took, the concept of ‘bee space’ was drilled into us. It’s important to keep a certain small distance between the frames in the hive in order to keep them easy to work with. If you leave too much space, the bees will build crazy bulging comb and make the frames harder to work with. Guess what. Somehow I managed to completely forget that lesson. Oops. So, when I went to check on my hives, I had crazy bulging comb and frames that…
-
how sweet it is
A sunny afternoon finally came on a day when I could go to the beeyard. It’s been about two weeks since I installed the bees, and I’ve been itching to go inspect them for about a week. Nothing tastes better than honey and comb, warm and drippy, straight from the hive. My girls thought so too..