Bee Keeping

Until today, everything I knew about beekeeping was from the book "The Secret Life of Bees". I highly recommend it - great read. Haven't seen the movie yet, but I hear it's good as well.

At any rate, having learned from this book that when one raises or tends to bees, the most important factor to the bee keepers safety is to enter without fear and to "be one" with the bees. Same for interaction with any living thing, if you ask me. But, perhaps more difficult when standing in the middle of a potential swarm of small creatures with mighty stingers.

Here's the colony we were tending today:
A friend of Clo's (my roommate) has recently started taking bee keeping classes and has two bee boxes set up in her back yard


We stopped by her house after the fun run today and she asked us if we wanted to fee the bees. As I have always wanted to don a beekeepers suit and learn how it's done, I jumped at this chance. They allowed me to wear the full suit, since it was my first try and Clo put on the make-shift suit.

Boy, did I feel official!

look at me, I'm a beekeeper!

What a pair of beekeepers we are!

The first step when approaching a hive, is to use smoke to make the bees go inside. Seems like it would be more logical for them to come OUT with smoke, but apparently during forests fires, bees retreat INto their homes. Interesting.

I grabbed the smoke can ...

and gave a few puffs towards the bee box as Clo removed the lid:

Then we used a funnel to pour the sugar water into the side of the box where the bees feed.

Unfortunately, some of the little guys are not too intelligent and had drowned in their dinner. I lovingly scooped them out, while reminding the other bees (in a loving voice, of course) that they should beware not to suffer the same fate).


After we poured their home-made nectar, some of my new little friends lapped up small drops that had fallen on the wood. Aren't they cute?


It was a fun experience. Maybe in the spring I can help collect the honey!