Celebrating diversity and making lemonade...

Celebrating diversity and making lemonade...

Sunday, April 24, 2016

Where is the queen?

Bees...

Today, Joshua and I headed up to Spokane to get our bees.  


Joshua in front of boxes of bees
Joshua holding our box of bees
Ready for the ride home

We had gotten their hive ready before we left.  When we got them home, I tried to put them in the hive...I pulled out the wire that the queen cage was attached to.  So, the queen cage fell to the bottom of the box.  I decided that I might as well just "bonk" and "pour" the bees into their new home and I could grab the queen cage.  I did this twice and I looked into the hive and I CANNOT FIND THE QUEEN CAGE!


I put everything together and we went out for a hike.  The bees settled down so after we came back from our hike, I tried to open up the hive and look for the queen cage again...there are so many bees and I cannot see any type of queen cage!  I am really upset!  I even got under the cage and looked up into the bottom (it has a screened bottom) but I still do not see the queen cage.  I have run my hands through the bees several times, hoping to bump into something solid and I just cannot find it!  


Called a couple of "seasoned" beekeepers.  One encouraged me to keep looking for her.  So, I gave it one more try and found her!  I will check and make sure she is out of her queen cage on Tuesday.

Sunday, April 10, 2016

Putting together our top bar hive!

Beekeeping

Joshua is taking beekeeping in 4-H so we decided to do a top bar hive for his 4-H project.  Joshua and I put together our top bar hive yesterday.  I filmed this with the camera the wrong direction (rookie mistake).  Also, during the video, Joshua mentioned that the bees need water and I said that we would be getting a waterbath.  I meant to say birdbath!  Ugh...

Today, we will put on a coat of tung oil to protect the wood from the elements.  Also, we will put our logo on the top and then maybe I will take another short video of the completely finished hive.  Bees come on April 24th!


If the weather holds out, Henry and I will be preparing the sunflower beds next Sunday!