Standing at the Trailhead of Winter

About three weeks ago, I peeked into the hive to see if anything was happening in the super. I found some bees milling about, but the frames were empty. Being as it was heading towards mid August, I figured getting any honey for us to feast on this season just wasn't going to happen. I was happy to see the frames in the deep covered, with lots of bee activity. This gives me hope that the bees will be comfortable through the winter, but just to be sure, I signed up for another class, one that will go into how to help the bees make it through a tough winter. That class is this upcoming Sunday, and I'm getting excited about attending and learning more. This evening, I went back to the hive to clean out the tall grass that has grown up around it. Though the grass is pretty and provides nice cover, it does block my viewing enjoyment. There's just something soothing about watching the bees work, and I couldn't watch from the back deck because of the grass. So I began pullin...

I reek. From smoke. But, I did find out the hive is doing okay. After dinner, I ventured outside to do some gardening. I looked over at the hive and noticed lots of bees outside the hive like I'd seen the other day. Many were coming and going, too, and across the street, I could see quite a few (at least I think they were some of my bees) sort of in a swirling flying pattern. Thankfully, they were maybe 25 or 30 feet in the air, so they weren't going to harm anyone walking by. I decided to go ahead and check the hive to see if anything was amiss inside, like hive beetles. I've been reading up on what could be making the bees act like petulant children, and hive beetles is one of them. I really didn't want to see beetles. So I donned my awesome astronaut bee suit, stoked the smoker until I had a good stream of smoke floating in the air (actually, I think I went overkill on the smoke--but it did what it's supposed to do), and went to work. Removing the super was e...

I woke up at the usual time this morning, 5:30ish, and though I didn't have to get up, I couldn't go back to sleep. The bees had arrived, and I had to go get them and bring them home to their new hive. Excitement along with trepidation propelled me out of bed to get ready for the trip. While I went through the basic beekeeping course and have been reading beekeeping books since then, I still wondered if I could actually take a cage that seemed to contain upwards of a thousand bees and transfer them to the hive. I wondered if I could get the queen safely nestled between two of the frames where the bees could then eat through the sticky plug and allow her to enter into their new home. Hubby teases me about my not-so-successful attempts to have goldfish, saying he hopes the bees last a bit longer, and this makes me wonder if I will end up, sadly, killing an entire hive of bees. I certainly hope I don't. (Hmmmmmm. I have no idea what happened here, but I had a paragraph abo...

Today I cashed in my Christmas present from Hubby and spent nearly eight hours learning about bees. I am now of the opinion that bees are the coolest insect ever. From their five eyes to their pollen basket, they are honey-making machines and hive engineers. The bee truly is an amazing creature. Come May, I will have my first hive in place, my first colony hopefully settling in and building their combs. I set off early, right at daylight, because of the unexpected snowfall yesterday that left nearly 4 inches of mess. I wanted to be sure to give myself enough time just in case the roads were still iffy. The highway had some icy spots starting off, but the farther I got away from home, the more the roads improved, so I finally relaxed, turned on the radio, and made my way towards Long Lane Honey Bee Farms just outside of Fairmount. The only rough spot I encountered was the road Google Maps told me to take just outside Oakwood. This road hadn't been plowed. This road called for 4-wh...