So I thought I would post some pictures of our beekeeping adventures. Jason and I are learning a ton, bees are really cool! But they are unpredictable and beekeeping is an art and a science. There are a lot of different opinions about how and why to do different things with your bees. You kind of just have to jump in and get started and figure things out as you go.
This is our first swarm. Sigh. No idea why. I had a camp out for the yw in our woods this weekend. Just as we were coming back to the house Saturday the kids ran up and said that there was a whole swarm of bees by the garden. I of course, totally thought they were exaggerating. But they were right, there was a swarm that luckily settled in a tree right by our garden. You can't know for sure why bees swarm. We suspect maybe the queen for this hive was just weak. But we really don't know.
Our friend Peter Lindsay was over helping with the camp out while Jason was at soccer. He was super interested and wanted to help. Luckily we still had the boxes we brought the bees from the farm in. Jason climbed up and gave the branch a good knock and they fell back in. We did this a few times to get as many as we could. Luckily bees fill up with honey before they swarm and are super mellow. No one got stung and bees were everywhere. I had a few fly right into my forehead and bonk off. It was funny.
This is Luke and Jason adding frames to the "new" hive. So far everyone is ok with their new homes and we now have 3 hives. The down side is that we won't be able to harvest from the 2 small ones. But I am soooo glad we got all those bees back.
Abby and Grace picked the whole row of peas and then shelled them for dinner. There was actually a few cups of peas to be eaten!
