What a whirl-wind day! Yesterday my friend, an experienced bee keeper and my bee mentor, urged me to get my vacant hives in order as there are swarms to be had at the moment. So I spent some time scraping and prepping hives, mixing up sugar water, mentally plotting where I might like to relocate the hives this year should a swarm come my way and lazily dreaming of all those pollinators helping my garden and landscaping as well as the honey I'd like to have this fall. Today my friend came over, blowtorch in hand, to help me finish the cleaning and gave me the heads up that I should be ready for "the call" in a day or two. No problem, I'll set these babies up tonight (or tomorrow morning) and be good to go should "the call" come over the weekend. Naturally, no sooner than my friend left and I was settled into a line at the grocery store did I get "THE CALL". Wait! What?! Now??!! I drove home (mentally tallying all that still needed to be done), made a few frantic calls to my husband looking for hive location approval and to my friend to let her know I was on my way home. Once I got home I set to work setting up hive boxes in a new spot in our yard, pounding holes in the lids of their sugar water to drip feed these ladies, and most importantly -- finding my bee suit and vail because there was no way I was working a swarm without a good layer of protection between those stingers and my skin. Soon, my friend and the bee guy showed up and got busy right away pouring 35,000 bees into one of my hives. I have to say that it never is lost on me the sheer awesomeness of this process. The "save the bees" shirt my friend was wearing really says it all for me. At first my interest in bees was completely selfish, it was all about that home grown honey. But now, two years in, the honey really is secondary. The realization that I am doing a small part to improve honeybee populations, as well as strengthening my garden is really what moves me to continue with bee keeping.
What a whirl-wind day! Yesterday my friend, an experienced bee keeper and my bee mentor, urged me to get my vacant hives in order as there are swarms to be had at the moment. So I spent some time scraping and prepping hives, mixing up sugar water, mentally plotting where I might like to relocate the hives this year should a swarm come my way and lazily dreaming of all those pollinators helping my garden and landscaping as well as the honey I'd like to have this fall. Today my friend came over, blowtorch in hand, to help me finish the cleaning and gave me the heads up that I should be ready for "the call" in a day or two. No problem, I'll set these babies up tonight (or tomorrow morning) and be good to go should "the call" come over the weekend. Naturally, no sooner than my friend left and I was settled into a line at the grocery store did I get "THE CALL". Wait! What?! Now??!! I drove home (mentally tallying all that still needed to be done), made a few frantic calls to my husband looking for hive location approval and to my friend to let her know I was on my way home. Once I got home I set to work setting up hive boxes in a new spot in our yard, pounding holes in the lids of their sugar water to drip feed these ladies, and most importantly -- finding my bee suit and vail because there was no way I was working a swarm without a good layer of protection between those stingers and my skin. Soon, my friend and the bee guy showed up and got busy right away pouring 35,000 bees into one of my hives. I have to say that it never is lost on me the sheer awesomeness of this process. The "save the bees" shirt my friend was wearing really says it all for me. At first my interest in bees was completely selfish, it was all about that home grown honey. But now, two years in, the honey really is secondary. The realization that I am doing a small part to improve honeybee populations, as well as strengthening my garden is really what moves me to continue with bee keeping.
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1 comment:
Thank you for sharing this process with your readers! Wishing you good bee luck!
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