Delayed

The Farm Supply store called a few minutes ago and stated that bee pick up has been delayed by a week. The cold winter slowed bee reproduction.

They arrive on Friday

I pick up the bee package on Friday!

2800 Bears wearing gold chains and driving caddys

In recent days, I have been exchanging email with my friend in NJ - who is also a new beekeeper. In a recent email, he said he was going to install his electric fence soon. being a curious person, I asked why an electric fence and he replied that where he lives there are 2800 bears in the county. Imagine how tough a bear from NJ is...claws and mafia connections. Hope the electric fence saves his honey.

Some Assembly Required

The feeder, extra honey super and frames arrived this afternoon. By accident I ordered unasembled frames. The snap toghter eaisly, but I will need to glue and staple them over the weekend. Note to self, pay attention when reading and ordering from the Brushy Mtn catalog. Two weeks until I pickup the bees.

A little old to be playing dress up

Church ran long and the weather is bad so no time on the bike today, thus we are looking for something to do. We decided to play dress up and light the smoker. It killed 30 minutes and let us see how ackward it is looking through the mask and how difficult it is to handle frames in bee gloves.

Empty Honey Super

In the event you have never seen a empty honey super. This is a medium sized super, the other sizes are shallow and deep. The hive that we purchased is a eight frame hive. We recenly purchased an additional honey super, top feeder, and a queen excluder.

The equipment

Here are two photos . Hives can be painted any color - traditionally hives are painted white, but any color will work. Light colors reflect heat. I chose this awful yellow-green because it was in the mistent section at HomeDepot and only cost $5 for the gallon. Although I have never lived in New England - I am a frugal New Englander.

Found some new bees

The Meckbees newsletter had an ad for a Farm Supply store that is selling bees for April 2nd delivery. Placed an order and will pickup the bees on the 2nd.

Brushy Mtn Bee Video

In the bee kit there is a video on how to raise bees, staring the Brushy Mtn owner. The video is funny but informative. The best part of the video is learnign how to install your bees and what to do during the first week. About this time, we learned that the father of a good friend is also becoming a beekeeper.

Ordering the bees

When it was time to order bees I called Brushy Mtn. and thought ordering bees would be easy - they were basically sold out of bees in mid Feb. I first tried to order bees for March delivery - sould out, April delivery -sold out, finally purchased bees for May delivery. We were not thrilled about having to wait until May 1st to pickup our bees.

43rd birthday

My birthday present was the Brushy Mountain English Garden beginner beekeeping kit. Neat starter kit witheverything that you need to become a beeper except the bees.

Bee School

Bee school was in interesting experience. The people that teach bee school are a nice group of people that are really into the honey bee. Some nights the information was great other nights it was a painful series of bee factoids. We had presentations on the digestive system of the drone, queen, female bees all a little different and I didnt care at all. I just wanted to know how to insert my 10,000 bees into the hive, keep them alive and then get some honey. I didnt care about the digestive system or how much bee sperm a queen could store. I left early when the presenter started talking about bee sperm.

How it started

The interest in becoming a beekeeper started at my friend's 50th birthday party. One of the gifts that he received was a jar of honey. Later in the night my wife and I started talking with the lady who gave Jim the honey and discovered that she was a beekeeper. She explained how she went to bee school throught the local bee keepers association. Our timing was lucky, as within two weeks the Meckbees had a one night intro to bee keeping night. We went and enjoyed ourself enough to register for the full bee school. Bee school began about six weeks later.