What $72 can get you these days - 3#s of Bees

I got Bees!!!  This morning I got a call around 9 that my bees were ready to be picked up.  Unfortunately I hadn't quite got around to a few all important finishing touches on the hive, like oh say actually setting it up outside or a roof.  So I scrambled around for a couple hours to finish everything up.

improvised cedar shingle roof

All the Parts ready to go

Ready for bees

I went to the apiary ready to drive home in a cloud of bees, but they have the bees in these really nice little boxes, and there's not a spare bee to be found.

The installation was nerve wreaking, you have to open the lid of the bee box and hold on the string that's attached to the queen cage.  needless to say with all the bees flying around and the gloves on I dropped the cage into the bee box (which has a small opening).  eventually I got the cage out and then had to "pour" about three pounds of bees out of the box into the hive.  The bees were very patient with me through all of this. 

Within five min. or so they had settled in to their new home.  I left the queen in the cage for a couple of hours so they wouldn't move out.  

it took a little while for the bees to learn where the entrance is

First floor view

the swarm

I had to force myself not to spend the rest of the day watching them.  I've named the queen Ba‘alat Gebal after the Phoenician Goddess of the city of Byblos.

 

Conected

I guess it has been a while since I've been near the internet.  The big news around here is that I've gotten rid of my cell phone in favor of a landline, which means DSL and Internet access.  So I should be able to update a little more often now.  

Spring is solidly here.  I boiled down the sap from my maple trees today.  Unfortunately I tapped the trees late and weather warmed up quickly.  None of those below 32F nights that really make the sap flow, so I only ended up with about 7 gallons of sap.  Which turned into about 3 cups of maple syrup, not a whole lot but it is very tasty.  

 My bee hives are  ready for bees, which should be here in the next couple of weeks.  I was going to post detailed how-to make these beehives but someone already did a much better job than I ever could - http://thebeespace.net/2008/07/30/introduction-warre-beehive-construction-guide/

The whole beekeeping thing was a really nice organic process.  Last fall I had no plans to keep bees this summer, then the Cap'n mentioned that he had some old langstroth hives in his barn that I could have if I wanted.  I took him up on the offer, cleaned out the hives and was just about to hit the send button on a overpriced order of foundation and other replacement parts, when I thought to myself - there has to be an easier way to keep bees.  Not more than 5 min later I found Abbe Warre and The Peoples Hive.  The short version of his story is that he decided to find the best hive for the masses.  So he built a lot of very different hives to test different designs, took the best aspects of each and came up with the People's Hive. I'll add some very informative links about his method of beekeeping and his book to the sidebar.  The main Idea though is to let the Bees be, they know what they are doing, and they don't need your help.  This is what my hives ended up looking like, 

For the past couple of weeks I've mostly been clearing trees and making a lot of really big mud pits with the tractor.  The ground is still really soft from all the rain but if it stays dry this weekend then I should be able to really start in with the backhoe.