Bee Day

When we bought our house there was a empty hive on the back of the property. We thought it would be fun to try beekeeping sometime but we were in no big rush to get bees. Well, a few weeks after we moved in I was walking by the hive and was amazed to see bees busily buzzing around the hive. I was excited and concerned. I had looked inside the hive when it was empty and knew that there was a certain amount of disarray in there.

I learned that one of my co-workers, Stan, kept bees and started quizzing him about what to do. Over the next several weeks I read up on bees and bought the basics of equipment.

Everything was ready and Stan came over today to show me what to do and help me straighten things out.

First we decided that the hive was not in the best spot. Since the hive is right next to the trees it doesn't get sun until 10:30 or 11:00 in the morning. That means the bees are mostly just sitting on their butts all morning waiting for it to warm up. We decided to put the hive on a piece of plywood that I will move a little bit each day until they make it to their new, sunnier location. It will be a kind of Incredible Journey for bees!

We also straightened out some frames that were not racked in the hive correctly and added another deep hive body. As the bees build upwards into the new deep they will move out of the old boxes which can then be removed and cleaned up.

The pictures show the hive before we started, me in full regalia, me blowing smoke into the hive, Stan levering apart some frames, and the hive put back together with a new deep on top (but not necessarily in that order, I'm tired of fighting with this thing trying to sort them out).