Removing a swarm from our bait hive.

07-26-13

Here's the videos we took when we moved the swarm from our bait hive into a standard Warre box. We'll join up that Warre box with the new hive we built at some point in this next week.

Please be aware that we're totally new to beekeeping. These videos are not intended to instruct you on the correct way to do things. We're totally learning as we go. We expect that you'll learn just as much from our mistakes as we do from our successes. Also know that not all the information given in the videos may be technically accurate. Please verify anything you hear on this blog with reputable sources before taking it for gospel truth. Finally, we are doing this as a project with my two boys (ages 8 and 6 when we started this spring), so I apologize for the shaky videos, etc, but it is what it is.

All that said, enjoy the videos!

Busy as a bee - One week after installing our bee package into our Warre hive 05-18-13

Whoever coined the phrase "busy as a bee" was NOT joking. Check out everything they've accomplished in just one week. Keep in mind this is in Minnesota, spring arrived late (there was snow on the ground less than one week before we installed the bees), there has been rain for about 2-3 of the 7 days they've been in the hive so I don't know how much foraging they've been able to do, and this is a 2lb package of bees instead of the 3lb package I was expecting. Crazy...

Bee Day Videos 05-11-13

Well, I finally figured out how to use Windows Live Movie Maker to edit these clips together. Here's the video of our first ever experience with live honey bees. I'll pretty much let it speak for itself. Just be warned, however, the videographer was a eight year old boy. It is, at times, shaky. And, at others, not even pointing in the right direction. Still, I think it captured the day quite well, and I can watch it over and over again just as enthralled as when I was actually there with the bees.

More videos coming soon. Here's the first...

Bee Day = HUGE Success!

I've been anticipating this day for some time now. Wondering. Waiting.

What would it be like? Would I be scared? Would it be an adrenalin rush? Would the bees be aggressive? Would I get stung? Would my kids, the ones I want to do this with, get freaked out and refuse to help with the bees any more? What would the bees sound like? What would they smell like? Would I, could I, dare to install the bees without wearing gloves as many advocate? Would the bees like their new home? The list goes on and on.

Well, despite some difficulties, the day was amazing! More than I could have hoped for. So what were the difficulties? Well, if you've read my previous posts, you know that I had originally intended to save money by trapping bees. If I got some, great, if not, then maybe next year. So, long story short, I came to the whole packaged bee thing a little late to the game. Instead of placing an order at a bee supplier f15 minutes from my parents' house (where our hive is located), the only place left taking orders was over 3 hours away. To make matters worse, I work every other weekend, and this happens to be my weekend to work. I worked until 11:30pm the night before bee day and then had to schedule my bee pickup for 8:45am so that I could be back, get the bees installed, and over to work by 3pm. That meant going to bed after midnight and getting up at 5am. To make matters EVEN worse. I couldn't sleep last night. Didn't fall asleep till almost 3am. So all this was done on 2 hours of sleep. But, despite these difficulties, the day was, as I said, amazing. I wish I could have just stayed afterwards and watched them for like an hour. Oh well. Next time.

And now, I must bid you adieu. I'm tired. I just got back from work. I need to go to sleep. A picture (or in this case, a video) is worth a thousand words anyway. I'll stop waxing poetic and work on getting our videos from the day posted early next week. I must warn you, however, the volunteer videographer happened to be an unseasoned 8 year old boy. You'll have to put up with a fair amount of ground shots... Still, over all, I think he did a good job and by the end of the summer maybe he'll have progressed to taking some really awesome videos of our bees!