The Bee's seem to be happy in their new hive and with a flurry of warm weather this week their is a reasonable amount of activity at the front of the hive. A small cloud of Bee's dances around the bottom entrance, whilst others come and go, departing and returning with nectar, pollen and other delights.It a real pleasure to watch them going to and frow and when you imagine a hive of bee's you usually think of a swarm of activity, when in reality there are usually just a few bee's flying in and out at once and with healthy respect I was able to stand quite close to the hive in my shorts and t-shirt and not alarm the bee's.
Since the last week or so had been stormy I had been unable to cut the grass, so it was time to make the weekly mow, now well overdue. I have about .75 of an acre which is virtually all lawn and usually spend a couple of hours zipping around on my rider mower trying to tackle it. I wondered how the bee's would react. I won't go into detail, but apart from a mild flurry as I mowed close to the entrance to the hive, the bee's seemed to remain very calm.
As the weather is likely to remain hot through the memorial day weekend, I plan to check the volume of sugar syrup in the feeder and refill. There also is potential that we may have some friend visiting on Sunday, so providing the weather remains fine, this may be a good time to practice my beespeel.
3 comments:
Hi Ricjard and Kevin. I've just come back from my own 2-day "bee school" and I'm really keen to get my own hives. I enjoyed reading your blog, and I love the name! What kind of hive is that you've got? It doesn't look like the National hives we saw at school.
I've linked to you from my blog at
www.bean-sprouts.org
I'd be great if you wanted to link back to me, but of course it's entirely up to you. I mostly blog about my family's quest for greater self-sufficiency. I hope I'll be blogging about my own bees in the near future.
Hi melanie, I know Richard got his hive somewhere else, but I ordered my hive at Betterbee - http://www.betterbee.com/products.asp?dept=219 - and am quite pleased with it. My only complaints were that it didn't come with enough nails and the diagram to contruct the hive had beeen photocopied so many times that it was difficult to view the pictures...
Bee Dummy Kevin
Thank you for the feedback Melanie.
I was going to go for the same package as Kevin, but resorted to buying mine from ebay instead. Mainly because I wanted to order some extra parts and I was on short notice, so I wanted a pre-assembled hive:
http://stores.ebay.com/Long-Lane-Honey-Bee-Farms
The man who makes them is very nice and is readily available by email or phone to answer all kinds of bee questions.
Ultimately the give ended up arriving late, but the bee's were fine in the nuc for some time.
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