• bees,  beeyard,  honey,  preparation

    ready for battle

    Yes, I tucked my pant legs into my socks, geek that I am. I was not interested in bees flying up my pants. This was my first visit out to the bees after being stung 9 times at once, so you can understand that I was taking every precaution. Including wearing my husband’s winter gloves. Yes, now I have to wash them because they’re sticky. It was worth it. I think I would have been stung otherwise, judging by the number of stingers I saw ready to strike, and the bees that were crawling on the gloves. I opened the lid, and there were about 20 bees there with their…

  • bees,  recipe,  stings

    taking a break

    I haven’t done much with bees lately. First, I was recovering from my 9 stings. Now, I seem to be having some sort of reaction to something that touched my face. No one really knows, or has any concrete answers for me. I’m slathering (sparingly) the itchy red swollen stinging burning oozing parts of my face with a corticosteroid/antibiotic cream combo, and taking two kinds of antihistamine (sleepy and non), prescribed by my doctor. Needless to say I don’t really want to come into contact with potential allergens right now, especially since I’m just over the bee stings. I’m hoping it’s just (!!!) poison ivy, and not anything related to…

  • bees,  learning,  stings

    counting for now

    Well, the results of the poll are tied between counting until my age, or counting forever. So I guess I’ll keep track for now. If I’m going to keep accurate results, though, I should mention that I actually had 9 stings last time, not 8 as previously posted. Once they all started to swell I noticed I had another one that was overlooked in the original counting. I think I’ll be wearing more protection next time I do some radical shifting – so the numbers should stay low for awhile. Speaking of which – Ken checked the hive that I was worried about, and he thinks I’ll get away with…

  • bees,  learning,  little city farm,  neat tricks

    guest pic

    This picture comes to you courtesy of Todd, a fellow newbie to the world of beekeeping. He and I, along with a few others, met at Little City Farm when we attended a small workshop on beekeeping. Those few of us that went on to take a more in-depth course at the Townsend House, University of Guelph, keep in touch on a semi-regular basis. We thought it might reduce the collective number of painful mistakes, if we could share our newbie experiences with the group of us. Still, we’ve all had our own ‘learning moments’, and it’s been good to grow together in this endeavor. Anyway, back to the pic…