be a bee keeper

I love honey

I am now officially a bee keeper… we built a top-bar-hive this winter and installed our first colony this spring. We’ve had a couple of learning experiments but overall, I think this is going well…

I bought family of honeybees and installed the hive at the end of my property last week. I inspected the hive for the first time yesterday. This is the most difficult time for the hive since no offspring is being born yet and the bees are gradually dying out. I found the queen laying eggs. That was all I wanted to see. So far so good.

i thought this was a far-off goal… though i was thinking of pursuing it in the spring… but a local farmer listed her beehive for sale with all of the equipment… we brought home all of the extra boxes and equipment yesterday, but the bees weren’t ready to be moved so we’re going to try picking them up tomorrow night…
i’m very excited and looking forward to this new experience!

...because I missed the best time to begin earlier this year. (I had a “cardiac adventure” and was thus pre-occupied.) Oh well, the delay will give me time to get the fields planted in clover and I would rather have clover honey than almond honey (almond orchards are across the road).

Next year or so, I would like to put a couple of bee families in my garden as we use to have it when I lived in Slovakia.