I hadn’t planned to be assembling deep frames at midnight. There I was, though, 12:05 in the morning pounding nails into my newly glued frame. When the phone rang earlier that evening, I had no idea that 24 hours later I would have three hives and my first bee sting of the year.
Aunt Bea’s
The Unbearable Lightness of Beeing
There seem to be quite a lot of bees, over 20,000 species worldwide. Bees are part of the insect genus Apis, which (surprise!) is Latin for bee. This post discusses the bees generally available in North America, which is one of the seven different species of honey bees generally recognized. Continue reading
Home is Where the Hive Is
Hive day!
Received an email from Aunt Bea’s earlier this week that they had a hive ready for me. A bit sooner than I was expecting, but took the day off to work on my future apiary, write a little, and pick up my new top bar hive. An apiary is just a fancy word for bee yard. Our yard is L-shaped, with our house at the base line. My lovely wife agreed to a spot in the side yard where I once had a garden and is now a little overgrown, so I went out early to check it out.
Future apiary as seen from a nearby cherry tree (10/17/2014 9:00 am)
Early morning sun is recommended for beehive orientation, as is a water source, some protection from the wind and shielding from busy activity. Continue reading
A Bee Sees
Welcome to the Bees with eeb blog. I keep thinking about bees, and this being October the chances of having a beehive in the immediate future is rather low. So I figured an outlet for this obsession might be good, so I thought perhaps I should write about the experience. Then I realized my parents had granted me the initials e-e-b, and I had a Julie & Julia moment, and here we are. Continue reading
Bees with eeb 