More Bees

Yesterday, we performed the three-week check on the bee hive. Things are looking good. We added a second hive body, so we now have a two-story hive. You can see the queen in the bottom left-hand corner of the second frame that we inspect. She has a white dot on her to aid in identification.

Busy Bees!

Aaron has a new hobby. He and our neighbor Steven are now bee keepers! Steven started talking about it with Aaron last year. After several months of building the hive in spare moments here and there, they are off and running. Steven provides the brains behind the operation, but they both really enjoy learning more as they get farther into it. It has been a fun way to get to know our neighbors better, too! The world of bees is actually pretty amazing. God has designed some pretty cool creatures.

Here are several videos showing our progress over the last few weeks.

We installed the bees on April 30th. The method they used is called a 24 hour install because they leave the package of bees in the have for a day and then take the (hopefully empty) package out the next day.

Day 1 of the 24 hour bee installation




Day 2 of the 24 hour bee installation




Week 1 Hive Inspection
We need to make sure that the queen is out of her cage, has been accepted by the rest of the hive, and is busy doing her thing.




Rogue Comb Removal
The bees made a bunch of comb in a bad location because of the location of the queen cage. As painful as it was, we had to remove a bunch of the bees' hard work.




Week 2 Hive Inspection
Things are looking good! There are a bunch of baby bees in the making as well as honey and pollen.