BEES!  zzzzz

Quite by accident I got into the honey business. Two years ago someone sold me a used hive with a batch of bees. I didn't know a thing except they're are supposed to make me some honey providing a comfy home for them. The first year went pretty good nothing bad happened. I didn't have a veil  or anti sting outfit and soon it was fall. I was told you can't take the honey out now as they need it to make it through the winter.

On the first of June a garden helper heard a noise by the garden and said "oh look, you have a swarm of bees!" This is always very exciting -the risk of danger of thousand of unpredictable stinging insects very near to you. I knew who to call for help and a spare empty hive. We had to scrounge up some "foundation" or bees wax sheets to put in the empty frames that saves the bees time in making honeycomb. I am learning as I go.

Bees swarm when their is another queen produced, it's too crowded in the old hive, no room to expand the honey production or there's weevil bugs that annoy them.

Soon the swarm was placed in it's new home and I now had two hives. This repeated again to this year. This years swarm as pictured above was an easy swarm to gather. we just snipped the branch and gentle shook it into the bottom part of the hive.

The bee box was then placed into position facing east on a couple bricks, getting it off the ground. after a week we added a "super" a smaller box that the bees store honey in. That's the box that interests me.

Every 21 days the bees can fill a 9 frame super with honey.

Keven, a brave neighbor about to snip a bunch of bees!

Theo assisting Kevin get the bees in the box

A close up of the swarm

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