Our Busy Bee's

It has been about 6 weeks since we last inspected the hives, so Saturday morning we opened them up.  They are all doing great. I was brave and got the closest I have ever been and was able to get some pretty good pictures and a couple videos.  

Look at all the glistening honey they are making us!

My first time with the bee hat.. haha I look so funny!  Let me tell you I was so hot while we were doing this.  

Sean getting geared up.  He  forgot to put rubber bands around his pant legs and got stung on his calf.  I would have quit, then and there if that would have been me:)

All of our hives our looking healthy this year.  

Here you can actually see a small pollen ball.

If you look closely at the next few pictures you can see some bee's being born, you can see their little heads popping out.

I realize this is kind of blurry, the sun was shining so bright I couldn't really tell if I was even in the right spot.  But if you look to the bottom you can see a bee being born.  I will try and do better at my video taking in the future. 

 If you want a giggle listen to this video till the end, I kinda lost my 'cool'.  One lone bee decided to chase me as soon as I took my hood off.  But I escaped without a sting:)

"Eat honey, my child, for it is good."

Proverbs 24:13

Busy Bee's

It has been a week since we got the bee's and it's time to open the boxes and make sure our queens are out of their  little box and that the hives look healthy.

He first added some rope that he will burn to make the smoke

The smoke makes them a bit more docile it masks the alarm pheromones that are released by the guard bees

He will remove the box they came in last week, and replace with  frames

They had already started to add some outer comb

We have a little feeder that we are adding sugar water just to make sure they have enough food while getting acclimated.  It gives the bee's a little jump start.

Sean removing the hive (super) they came in

brushing the bee's off carefully 

replacing the box with the extra frames

The queens box, can now be removed she has been excepted by the hive

I tried to get a picture of the queen, we saw her but she was quickly covered by the bees

She is darker than all the rest of the bees and has a longer body, every time we saw her I was just not quick enough with the camera, before the rest of the bees climbed on top of her to protect her.

The bee's look great and had already started to make us some honey. I was surprised that they were as calm as they were.  Last year I stayed as far away as possible, this year I was right next to Sean, did not have a veil on, and the bee's just ignored me.  Sean just uses latex gloves on his hands, he did feel a small prick on his thumb but the stinger did not go through the glove.

He has also learned  the hard way to put rubber bands around the bottom of his pant legs. 

 In order for me to get any closer I will need to buy a jacket and veil, but I felt pretty brave if I do say so myself. 

Bee's Have Arrived

I wanted to post all my bee pictures for a couple days now, but between my son's knee surgery, and my husband having to get a tooth pulled, and then deciding on a whim to paint my family room, I got a bit distracted.
Happy to report son is feeling better, husband is living on Carnation Instant Breakfast's for a couple more days till his mouth heals, but not in pain any more.  My family room still needs the trim work done but should be finished this week.

Our bee's arrived on Saturday, Sean was pretty excited to get our bee's going again.  We made a couple improvements on their hives and hopefully have learned some lessons.

This is what the bee's are delivered in.

We ordered Carnolian Bee's it's the second most popular bee for bee keepers after the Italian bee's.

The Carnolian Bee's are known to be great defenders of their hives and yet a bit nicer to their bee keepers.

Removing the can, that has been feeding the bee's during the transportation.

Each hive come with it's own queen she is in her own cage that has a small plug in it, when you remove the plug you replace it with another plug that is food by the time the bee's eat through it they have bonded with the queen.

The queen is placed inside the hive first, Sean just attaches it with a rubber band which we will later remove.

Sean adds a protein patty that also has some antibiotics.

The rest of the box containing the bee's slips right into the box.

The bee's were quickly flying off to find pollen it's an awesome sound to hear.

Looking forward to all that honey.

Biking, Bee's and Boysenberries

Well we got our bikes back from Mad Dog Cycles they are all tuned up and ready to go.  So this morning after lazing around with my hubby I convinced him to give the bikes a whirl before the rain came.  Visions of riding up the canyon like I used to when my kids were little were running through my mind... that's about all they did, cause after a mile I realized how completely out of shape this mama/grandma has become!  Geesh, that was just down right embarrassing.

Maybe I'll make it to the mouth of the canyon in a couple weeks, but the canyon, well that may just take me a little while to work up to that:)  But like the blog title says...'it's still being written' haha

I have to show you the pics of my veggies they are coming along great.  Just a few more weeks till we can put them in our garden, must get the garden rota-tilled soon. 

My cucumbers...

My Spaghetti Squash...

I also wanted to introduce the rest of my family my 3 dogs; Bosley, Zoe, and Jack.  Not to be left out our pretty kitty Dolly.  I bet you can't guess that I am a huge animal lover.  I told my hubby all I needed now was a 'fainting goat' look it up, so cute.

Last year my hubby and I decided to try some bee keeping, (having been inspired by one of our son's in-laws) now what I really mean is that I thought it would be a good idea as long as I could admire from afar, and let Sean do the scary work.  We had 2 hives of Carnolian Bee's and ended up with about 40 pounds of honey at the end of the year.  Unfortunately, we lost both hives over the winter.  So we start fresh again this year, having learned a few lessons a long the way.  We ordered our bee's from The Knight Family Bee's a local place, and we get all of our equipment from Manlake.  Our bee's will be ready to pick up at the end of April and we (really I mean he) is ready for them.

 Finally, I keep forgetting to talk about our new berry plants, we planted 3 Boysenberry plants and 3 Raspberry.  The raspberries look like 3 sticks sticking out of the ground we are just starting to see a few shoots appear, I'll take some pictures of those when there is actually something to see.

 The Boysenberries are looking great, sad we won't have fruit from what I understand till next year.  

Last but not least on a rainy Saturday afternoon what is better than making some home made soft pretzels and a good movie with my sweetie.

Have a great weekend!