New Bees!

Chad's mom ordered him new bees for his impending birthday (it's the big 3-0. Don't tell him I told you.) They were delivered bright and early Saturday morning but it was too cold on Saturday preceding bad overnight storm so we waited until this morning.

We hope that these two new hives will stick around and be successful after we lost both of our hives this past year.

St. Elmo Sweetness lives on, fingers crossed.  

When you order bees, this is how they come to you. The queen is inside that large clump in a little cage of her own.

Under that thin piece of wood at the top is a can of thick sugar syrup with two tiny holes punched it in. They eat this in transit and until you get them in their hive.

 

P.S. these bees are in my guest room at the time this photo was taken. Too cold overnight to leave them exposed so we brought them in the house. The cat was painfully curious so we had to keep the door closed, which she did NOT appreciate.

Here is Chad taking the can of syrup out of the top so he can get to the queen cage.

 

Putting the queen cage in the hive body - it has other bees on it.

The queen cage is plugged with a sugar paste of sorts. The bees will eat through the sugar and release her once they are all in the hive together.

This is the crazy part...you spray the bees down with water (when their wings are wet, they don't fly) and then literally shake/pour them into the hive. You can see the pile of bees spilling into the hive in that photo.

Here you can see that the transport container is much emptier - only a few bees left.

 

Putting the inner cover on...

Putting the outer cover/lid on...

Chad did get stung once on this round because a bee got stuck in his shirt near his armpit. Other than that, all went well.

For the second round, we had a friend come over and help who is interested in getting bees of his own. Chad was teaching/showing and then let M do his thing...

we had to wait 30+ minutes before putting these bees in their hive but we ended up waiting about an hour for M and his sweet wife, K,  to get out of church. It was really perfect timing and worked out really well.

M dumping the bees into the hive while Chad keeps them sprayed. I am sure that 2 sets of hands would be optimal for this entire process but I am too much of a pansy to participate. Either way, it was nice to have M here to use his bravery and help Chad with the second hive.

Inner cover placement...

Bee discussions...brave dudes.

Two new hives!

Crossing our fingers that we get many years out of these girls.

quiet.

Sorry it has been so quite on the home front...work is nuts right now. A few big events and trainings left to go and then the summer should settle down a little. I am really, really looking forward to that happening!

I had a couple of evenings off last week and I just stayed home and quiet and enjoyed the time with my guy. It was nice to see his face!

This weekend we harvested honey from our older hive. They were literally running out of room and since it was already 6 supers (boxes) high, we couldn't really add any more and be able to see in the top and work with it. And of course, I use "we" very loosely...Chad really does all of the work with the hive. I did, however, help quite a bit with the actual honey harvesting. We only took honey off of 2 boxes but we got over 40 pounds...once we got all of the honey out of our extractor and let it drain out of the cappings (the wax you slice off to get the honey out), we got a ton!  It is much lighter than last summer's honey, since it is not mixed with the honey from the honey flow that is yet to come. It is more of a light blonde and last year's was a brunette. :)  We'll probably get at least that much more next time we harvest (late June or July?) so we are definately selling it this year...anyone interested in local honey??

Bzzzz.

So when you order bees, this is how they come (as long as you don't get a nuc - which would include eggs and honey too). This set up just has a couple of pounds of bees and a queen - along with a can of sugar water for them to eat/drink on the drive.

Our bees came from an apiary (a bee breeder!) and they were delivered on a truck headed somewhere else today. Chad's dad went and picked them up (literally right off the truck near the highway!) and brought them to us earlier today and they were waiting at home for us when we got off work!

If you can see the little plate on the top - that is just a little piece of plywood that you pry off and you can access the screened in portion that way.

 You take the bees out to where you are going to put the hive...which is in our side yard next to the older hive. Here is Chad crossing the bridge to the side yard where the clover and bees live!

Once you pry off the plywood to get inside, you need to get the queen out and put her in the new hive. Here you can see Chad getting the smaller box out that houses the queen and putting it in the new hive. Once the queen is in the new hive, the other bees will go in there to protect her so it makes it easier.  

 Basically now all you have to do is dump the bees into the hive! It looks nuts but that is the best and easiest thing to do. The top of the hive is open and the bees just fall into it. Once you have everyone in there, you can put the lid on top. You can see that the other hive is much older and more mature. This is the 3rd year we will have it and Chad has already put on the extra honey supers so it is 5 supers (boxes) high.

So there you have it!  A short bee lesson for the day.

Chad did get stung more times today than he has before so we've already dosed him with Benadryl and checked for stingers and I promise I will keep an eye on him! The bees didn't like to be moved!



G-dub.

Chad got his new hive of bees this afternoon (a whole post dedicated to that momentarily!) but I couldn't resist taking some pictures of Gwendolen while she hung out in the clover with her dude.

Chad intentionally planted red and white clover on the side of our yard where our - now two! - bee hives reside. We don't mow over there because  - well, obviously - it is for the bees. Since we have had this lovely warm weather and just enough rain, the clover has been in little clover heaven. It is about up to our knees now and Gwendolen loves to run through it.

Of course, "up to our knees" means over Gwendolen's head so I do deeply enjoy watching her gallop through it when all I can see are ears bouncing away!

Can you see that little Gwen face in there??

And here she is running towards me...this face rocks!

Enjoyment.

I like that I got my 3 days of traveling done and still had a weekend at home with my sweetie! Since I got home Friday night, I still got to chill out, do errands and laundry, and go to the grocery store today without feeling like I lost my entire weekend!

Yesterday was great...we slept in and hung out. I worked on pictures -filtering and editing and sorting (you should see how organized my external hard drives stays! It is the most organized place in my life and I am so proud! :) )  and Chad worked on his bee hives. We are getting a second hive of bees this spring so his dad came over to help him rearrange some stuff and get a place set up for the new hive. We had to run down to LaFayette to pick up a few extra things to finish building the hive but we're all set now...waiting on the arrival of the bees! They are coming in on a tractor trailer with a bunch of other bees so we literally have to meet them on the side of the highway and pick them up...that should be a story to tell! ( I will try to remember to take pictures!).

Today we got up early and went to the first service at church like we usually do. The second service has gotten so crowded - it is just easier to go at 9 am! After church, we headed over to the home of a sweet couple that sits behind us at church. They invited us and a bunch of other people over for lunch and she fixed "Bible foods" - salmon and pita - you know, loaves and fishes!! It was delicious and the company was great. It is awesome how we literally just met at the "turn and say hello to someone sitting near you" moment at church and it has blossomed into a sweet friendship now. We got to meet some other young couples our age so it is always fun to connect with new people too!

After our traditional Sunday trip to the grocery store, we are hanging out at home, folding said 4 loads of laundry and catching up on 2 missed weeks of NCIS...Chad is finishing up painting some waterproofing on the outside of the beehive and then we'll do dinner and hopefully go to bed early!

I only have to work one or two nights this week so I am looking forward to being at home and getting some things done!

honey.

As I reported here we got over 31 pounds of honey this year - so much in fact that we had to go buy more jars!

The first thing you do is cut the "caps" off the frames of honey. This is the newest, freshest wax that seals up each individual space in the honeycomb; it is also the wax that you will clean and save to make candles, lip balm, etc. - which we did! Well, I mean we saved it and cleaned it. We haven't actually made anything with it yet. You then put these now-dripping frames into the extractor. The extractor basically acts like a large centrifuge that spins the honey out of the comb, allowing it to drain to the bottom.

 This is the valve at the bottom of the extractor. The honey comes out of the valve and passes through two filters, decreasing in size. This gets out any bits of wax, debris, etc. You then use the valve at the bottom of the bucket to pour the honey into jars, after waiting at least 24 hours for the air bubbles to come out of the honey.

This is our final jarred honey. The largest of the jars is going to be used for the mead. The other three sizes will be for consumption! I especially love the little squatty, flat jars which were given to us by a sweet family friend.

A sticky wonderful mess!