my bees

[Dexter's Shed]

http://youtu.be/eBSK9SYHrhU

[oldclaypaws]

I've got friends who are apiarists, and have I think one hive. Last year they got 40lbs of honey. They have a honey club with a shared centrifuge and so are also able to produce beeswax. (which is possibly as useful a commodity as the sweet stuff?). They gave us a nice cast fir-cone shaped candle, which had to be gathered, remelted and recast after the puppy found it interesting and chewed it into small fragments.

Love bees, and like honey roast meats and salmon, but don't have a sweet tooth at all and so don't care for honey. Otherwise, I'd go for it. If putting a hive in a wood I'd seriously suggest thinking about anti-badger measures such as an electric fence; badgers go nuts for honey and are always digging up any ground nesting bees in our wood. They'd be sure to try and break into any hive they could get at, unless you set it several feet off the ground or use something like deer fencing round it (?).

Beeswax uses;

http://matteroftrust.org/5044/101-uses-for-beeswax

[Bearwood]

What can you do hey Dexter? Bees is gonna' swarm!

I found four queen cells but no queen in my hive upon first inspection, bought in a new queen and performed an artificial swarm so I now have one colony on six frames and a nucleus on five frames.

I guess I'm getting into it faster than I'd planned, although two hives are always better than one I gather.

Good luck with your colonies, I hope that the mild weather will help them build up before winter.

[Dexter's Shed]

well, I checked on the second hive today, and would never imagine on what I found inside


http://youtu.be/t_xzwRSBHb4