Springtime means BEES! Well, for us beekeepers, that is. And Friday afternoon, our honey bees arrived! This is a highly anticipated event, because in order to have bees guaranteed in the Spring, you have to have them ordered all the way back in November.
(See Gage's face in the second picture? He was all, "Take a picture of me behind the box and everyone will think the bees are swarming me!")
Anyway, we received two boxes just like that full of bees. You can't really tell, but in the middle of that swarm, is the queen cage holding the queen bee. I have a picture of the cage below.
The tricky part of this whole thing? We have to get all those bees into their new home - our hive! We have two packages of bees, so we have two hives like this all set up and ready for their new inhabitants.
After we hung the queen cage in the hive, we (you know - Derek) basically poured the other bees in the hive, carefully replaced the frames, and let them do their thing.
Now it's real important to leave the hives alone for at least a week, because if the bees get disturbed, they could kill their queen. But after that week, we will open the hives again and make sure the queen has been released from the cage, and that she has begun laying eggs. That means the bees have accepted her as their leader and everything is hunky dory.
One day after transfer, the worker bees seemed settled in and were going in and out of the hive:
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3 comments:
This is so interesting to me! Thanks. Keep us posted, k?
That is SO interesting. How nice of you to explain with photos and everything. This is really fun and educational.
Hope you're having a great Monday!
Hugs,
Elinore D.
Well this is very cool and I have actually done a little studying about bee-keeping because I have a little family that I have purchased beeswax candles from. They raise bees, sell honey and make the candles from their own beeswax! It's a fascinating thing to me. Their URL is: http://www.honeyflowfarm.com/
They have these informational pages on their site about the whole process from start, to honey, to wintering the hives etc. It's very interesting! I didn't know you guys were into this as well! That's cool!
Thanks for the comment concerning Zach. My sister called me last week and told me both she and my brother felt sorry for me because of the 3 of us, I was the one who had "never done anything wrong!" HA!!
Well, you know that's not true! BUT she was referring to the fact that she and my brother got up to lots of "no good" growing through their teens and early 20s - whereas I never did get into any trouble, never tried anything wrong etc. They can understand and identify with Zach and not be so shaken by it all, as I am - never having been through this kind of behavior myself. Maybe... I don't know.
I just want MY boy back - I don't know this person of the last couple of years. : /
Hopefully the judge will be merciful. We know he will be liable for a fine (amount unknown right now) and for court costs (amount also unknown) and he has already had his license suspended for 6 months. I just hope financial repercussions are within his ability to pay them. Sigh.
Thanks friend - will keep you updated.
Hugs,
Lynn
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