As fall looms on the horizon, the bees know they have to make every minute count. Soon winter will be here and they and their fellow sister bees will be clustered in a tight clump in the frigid hive. The cold girls will work their way into the center where it’s warmer and closer to the food they’ve stored. When they are warm, they make room for the colder bees. You may ask, where are the males (drones). They’ve been…
This past weekend I attended a Fun Day for beekeepers. In order to show how bees cluster to their queen, two brave souls volunteered to let bees make bee beards on them. The speakers tied the queen of each hive in a small box under the chin of the volunteers. Then they dumped the queen’s hive on a tray under the volunteers chins. The bees clustered around the queen. This picture is the result! My books are available from Amazon.com…
Are you familiar with that saying, some days you’re the dog and some days you’re the fire hydrant? That’s how I felt last Saturday. A friend and I had planned for a long time to extract honey from her hives. I haven’t gotten any from my hives this year, but she had, and I had an extractor. For 40 years I’d stored that thing in my basement in its original box. I belonged to my dad. He’d planned to reestablish…
Beekeeping was one of those things on my bucket list, but as I hit 80 I thought that would be one thing that would be left in my bucket, unrealized. My dad and I kept bees in my younger years. We marketed it under the name “Uncle Hank’s Honey.” Then this spring some dear friends offered me a hive and I took them up on their offer. My son, Josh and I check them regularly. So far, they have laid…