We have nine beehives now – isn’t that amazing? Things got insanely busy after my last post about them and I never posted an update. A couple of our hives have swarmed since then, which gave us opportunity to practice some creative swarm catching techniques. …
Today was such an adventure. A swarm of honeybees landed in a tree right by our house, not 20 feet outside our door. Since we didn’t have to go anywhere, I was able to take a LOT of pictures. In the tree (about 10 feet …
Stephen and I each got an email this morning with our beekeeping test scores. We both passed. I am so excited – parts of the test were really easy, but there were a few parts of it that threw me a little. It was a …
It’s definitely spring – wow – is the pollen count through the roof or what?!? It’s been so beautiful out lately. It makes me just want to stay outside all day, but of course that doesn’t happen. There’s too much to do inside. Sunday our …
Yesterday it was 80 here, so Stephen and I decided to go into the hives. I’ve stood next to him before as he’s gone through them, but never actually opened up the boxes myself. I was terrified. LOL! We have the top part of a …
It’s class time here! Stephen and I will be starting “bee school” tonight. I am so excited. When the classes are done, we’ll each have our local and state certification for beekeeping. Now it looks like I just need to find myself a bee suit. …
Bees bearding – they often do this on hot nights to cool down the hive. I think it’s fascinating to watch, and interesting to consider that they will “sleep outside” when it gets too hot inside the hive.
Brushing bees off a frame of honey so we can take it in the house We harvested more honey over the weekend. It was probably the last super we will take off the hive for the year. They’re still bringing in a good bit of …
When the wax in the honey strainer bucket was pretty much done filtering (see here for the first post on processing honey), we put it in a pan and set it on the porch so the bees could take the last of the honey from …
We started working on harvesting honey today. Our home smells amazing. There have been some questions asked about the process we use, so we took a lot of pictures this time. This is the super we’re harvesting today. Each layer in a hive is called …
