The pedigree of honey Does not concern the bee; A clover, any time, to him, Is aristocracy.

A quick tea time with the ladies this morning-

Being a bee keeper is something that I've always wanted to do since I was a kid. Although I agree you have to be slightly tapped to find playing in hundreds of thousands of bee's a source of a goodtime I do realize that being a beekeeper means more than just playing with the girls.  Beekeeping as told by wiki:

Beekeeping (or apiculture,) is the maintenance of honey bee colonies, commonly in hives, by humans. A beekeeper (or apiarist) keeps bees in order to collect honey and other products of the hive (including beeswax, propolis, pollen, and royal jelly), to pollinate crops, or to produce bees for sale to other beekeepers. A location where bees are kept is called an apiary or "bee yard".  And yes I agree that all these "products of the hive," are a great aspect of bee keeping- I do, however want bee keeping to be my job because of the importance of honeybee's in the world.  Let me put it this way- if there are no honeybee's there are no apples. And who doesn't like apple pies, or apple moonshine?  Our honey bee's pollinate fruits, flowers, and trees in order to keep our world in good working order, and our bellies full. 

"If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe then man would only have four years of life left. No more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more animals, no more man," said Albert Einstein." Please give that a thought next time you take a bite of your Macintosh. 

So enough with the little lesson and onto the pictures- lets be real, pictures are funner. Yup I said funner.

Part of bee keeping is just watching the hive and seeing what the gals are up to on a daily basis. Each day (typically in my pj's with an energy drink in hand) I walk out to the bee yard. I've noticed since the day I got them that at about 9am every morning you can see the bee's start waking up. Its seems to be their time where they realize the day is new and work is to begin:) Here are some ladies flyin on in aroud 9:15

Knowing that I will not be able to check the hive for two days, due to crap weather coming, I got some bee drank ready.  Bee feed or as I like to say "drank," is your basic combination of sugar and water melted down to make a simple syrup. It resembles nectar of flowers and bee's think its the knee's.  You fill up old jars with the drank and put it into the hive to help keep the bee's in the hive and working (building comb).  If I were to not feed them the bee's, they could starve (due to being a new colony) or venture out of the hive to collect nectar thus making them work twice as hard.  This is equivalant to having a Howard Johnson's buffet table in your kitchen. This here is an old spaghetti sauce bottle with some holes poked into the cover.  This jar in particular has been in the hive an the bee's started to propolize it to the frames.  You can see the propolis in dark yellow lines across the top of the jar. Propolis is basically "bee glue," and bee's like to glue everything.

 

Opening the hive. Kinda windy and cool today so not many bee's up at top of hive

closer look

 

two feeding jars sitting directly ontop of frames.  Eventually all of these frames will be full of bee's. Being a newly established hive means the bee's work from the middle frames to outer frames.

The ladies:) And yes- most of the honey bee's in the hive are ladies. The duties range from being enterance guards, foragers, comb builders, to nurse's, to being awesome.

Comin in hot!

Bee feed is one part water to one part sugar from spring to fall. From now till Nov. 1st my hives will each consume 100 pounds of sugar.

When it comes to getting a total of 200 pounds of sugar who wouldn't pass up a "Great Value," Great Value is what being an American is all about.....I mean take Louisiana Purchase for instance?!

In for a landing

Greeter and Guard bee's

Please feel free to ask any questions about the honey bee's and hive workings.  There really are no stupid questions when it comes to them (except for a couple) and it helps me to learn more by answering:) Enjoy your day!