A little over a week ago Forest and I were out on the front porch to send off Chris as he left for field work. It was right after dinner, nearing 6pm and the sun comes over the driveway rather harshly at that time during this season. In the glow of that hour, we noticed a huge ball of insects flying, backlit by the sun. We paused to look at them for a second and Chris started to say something about them, literally made it three or four words in an attempt to say one thing before switching, and then getting really excited to say that they were bees! We…

(Airplanes > bees !) Four years ago we brought our first package of bees home to the hive and they thrived for three years, more or less, until last year’s rainy mess of a spring and a hive beetle infestation took over the hive. Since then the hive sat unused, other than for the odd roach and other insect, in the flower garden. While the hive was an interesting aspect to the flower garden, after tending to the bees there for so long I really began to re-think where the hive should be located. It was frustrating for me not to be able to enjoy the garden to its fullest…

This year the bees have been doing very well. Last year we had the freak freeze/ice storm in early March just as we were leaving for Florida. We had left the hive unprotected and thus at least half of the bees perished. It was touch and go for awhile and then we ended up with a bad hive beetle infestation. I believe Chris pulled only a comb from the hive, giving us a quart of honey for last year. It was rough last year for the bees. Chris got the hive beetles under control and has been able to take care of the bees better this year and so we…

It had been several months, really since we harvested honey that we’ve done any kind of good hive inspection. We’ve been in the hive a couple of times for small checks, but this time we needed to look to see if small hive beetle had completely taken over the combs and were hatching larvae. It could have been disastrous, losing our entire hive—they would just up and leave because the beetles might have been too much to handle. I was worried. Over the last two months I had been hoping that the bees would have put on several more combs of honey for winter and they haven’t. The hive split…

We harvested two bars of honey this morning! The bees are in crazy comb making mode right now and Chris thought we might be able to nab some honey from them while they are still building comb and storing up for the winter. Around 6:58 the volume goes off, so no it isn’t your computer. I forgot to turn the volume back up for that segment and didn’t realize it until the video was uploaded. Sorry! I’m a newbie at this video editing stuff. Around 8:30 we switch to indoors and show you the crushing up of the comb. This was our first time noticing small hive beetle in our…

What? You thought I was getting broody? No, not yet, but the queen of our hive sure is! See there in the middle, the white capped cells? That’s brood, eggs that were laid by the queen waiting to develop into full grown bees! Last weekend Chris and I took out each comb in an attempt to try to find the queen. We didn’t end up finding her, silly girl was hiding in the mass of workers and drones. Our colony has been busy building up their comb and adding more in the last week. Now when I open the window I can actually see the combs—usually. With this freakish cold…