Busy Bee.

Some of you have asked about my beekeeping, so I thought I'd give you a virtual tour of sorts:

My bees are about 15 minutes away from here, out in the country. It's a really beautiful drive, especially right now with everything waiting for first harvesting. (It seems like we get at least 2 or 3 harvest seasons a year.) I took this picture on the way out of the wheat fields and an American flag. Beautiful.

People sometimes ask me if I'm not afraid when I work with my bees. And the answer is "Yes" but it isn't the bees I'm afraid of. It's lighting the smoker. I have a fear of fire, and the first thing I have to do, before I can open my hive, is to get a bunch of pine needles really burning and smoking. I tend to be too timid with my fire, and so it usually goes out and I have to do it again. I'm trying to be more brave about it. (In this picture, I need to use the bellows and get the flames jumping out the top.)

My hive is on a beautiful blueberry and blackberry farm. When I approached it last Saturday (when I took this picture) I could tell that something or someone had gotten into my hive--see how the lid is kind of tilted and not put on quite right? My hive is a very light Carolina blue. (Go Tarheels.) When I get into my beehive, I have to make sure to move very slowly and carefully. Bees can't hear, but they sense vibrations with their antennae. You don't want to frighten them.

This is my hive, open, with the top super (those are what the hive boxes are called) already removed. The big super is where I spend most of my time. I look at each frame of honeycomb to see how much honey and pollen the bees have to eat, to check for other bugs, and to make sure that there are lots of baby bees. I always try to find my queen, but she is pretty elusive these days.

This is a picture looking down into the super, and those are my bees. Can you see how they're making bridges with each other?? It cracks me up when they do that. Bees hate too much open space--they like 5/8 inch. Any more than that, and they'll try to fill it up as fast as they can. Any less, and they feel too crowded and they'll swarm. There are 10 frames in each super, and a healthy hive has between 20,000 and 40,000 bees at it's summer peak.

Last one, this is just a good shot of a frame already filled out with beeswax. The wax is filled with honey and it is VERY heavy. The bees are putting wax caps on the honey, to store it for the winter.

So those are my bees--you're welcome to come with me and meet them, any time you like! :)

Love, Becca