visiting the bee hives
By ickledigga
14 comments
My new bee suit arrived the other day and ever since i have been dying to go and see the honey bees to see what they are up to! We thought that it would be a good idea to go in the middle of the day as many of the worker bees would be out collecting pollen. Here are the bee hives:
Tom attempted the light the smoker and whilst it was getting going decided to lift the lid on a beehive! The noise the bees made was very loud. Inside the bees were busily getting on with their day! As you can imagine they didn’t take too kindly to our interruption and became agitated. This is when we got the smoker out!
This does not harm the bees it tricks them into thinking their hive is on fire so they go inside gorge on the honey which then makes them very docile and lazy!
We were checking which hives were inhabited and the health of the hives! We found three hives full of bees and although we did not see any queen bees the evidence of eggs and emerging bees means each hive has a queen inside which is excellent news!
We found that in one of the hives the frames are almost full to bursting with honey:
We will be extracting this soon! Below the super which contains the above frames is a brooder… this is where the queen lives! It is also full of farmes of honey. We do not take this honey this belongs to the bees! We only take the excess! We were also checking for the mite which is responsible for the nationwide threat to bees and I am happy to report we found no signs of it!
So all in all we are extremely happy with our findings and will be looking forward to extracting the honey very soon! And even better I didn’t get stung! Tom did twice!
11 May, 2008
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Comments
once you get stung you send of pheromones to the bees which sends them a signal to attack so if you get stung you are bound to get stung again... and again...and.....!! Best to go to the hives with someone who the bees like to attack to avoid getting stung yourself!
11 May, 2008
Keeping bees looks interesting but I think you have to know how to treat them. I bet you're looking forward to tasting the honey.
11 May, 2008
Your brave! Must be exciting though.
11 May, 2008
How many hives do you have ? have you been keeping hives for long ? great pics.
11 May, 2008
I am SOOO impressed, ickle. I couldn't keep bees in a thousand years!
11 May, 2008
Lil we have 3 hives full of bees and 1 spare for if they swarm... now theres a sight! The others are empty so we will be getting rid of these! Hopefully the honey off this first hive should be runny honey and not set like the last batch! This is our third year keeping bees! It is fascinating! I'm not an expert but take advice from those who are!
12 May, 2008
Wonderful :-) Why are some hives empty? And (might be a silly question this) where did the bees come from? Do you have to buy them and put them in or do they arrive by themselves? Sorry if these are daft questions?!
12 May, 2008
sometimes the bees find a new hive to live in... last year we had a lot of angry mean bees and they left and we got someone else's nice friendly bees! Originallly you do have to put them in tho! If they swarm you have to go and retrieve them and put them back into their hive.
12 May, 2008
How does one retrieve a bee?!
13 May, 2008
bees swarm to produce new colonies so they gorge themselves on honey to last them until they are newly established this makes them easy to catch as they are dopey. We encourage the bees onto a frame like the one in the pic (above) usually gentle persuasion like brush them! then tip them onto a sheet in front of an empty hive the queen should crawl in first and then the other bees follow!
13 May, 2008
Oh, i see......now that makes sense. I had a vision of you stood on a roof blowing a wistle or something...?! A former employer once told me 'You are living on Planet Sarah'. You can see why, can't you?! Ha ha ha.....
13 May, 2008
oh don't worry before keeping bees i thought there was a tap on the hive where the honey came out i didn't quite realise all the processes involved!! ha ha!!!
14 May, 2008
Well I thought the bees had little tiny buckets and they had to climb a ladder inside the hive and pour the honey into a big pot......or is that just in the cartoons???!!!! ha ha ha....
14 May, 2008
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wow great pics , brilliant to see all the hives and well done you, not getting stung. poor tom though
11 May, 2008