Sunday, April 17, 2011

Bees Are About!

Vet2Be and Hubby have been out with the bees a few times this spring. Yay! The bees made it through the winter!

Last week when they went out they added another box to the top. When they removed the top of the hive they found it filled with burr comb already. And the burr comb had larva in it. They saw all stages of larva!

I thought about sending the camera out with them, but didn't. Vet2Be thought about bringing the camera out with him, but didn't. So we don't have photos of the larva and the burr comb--but Hubby and Vet2Be were very excited!

Recently they went out just to look. Hubby likes to spend a few minutes looking at the bees right before dinner. I think it calms his nerves a little, seeing all the workers working and feeling the nice warm weather, too.

You can really see all the bees using the second entrance towards the top of the hive.

They like the bottom entrance, too, but it is harder to see them in this photo.

It seems that we will have plenty of honey this year! Hooray! Last year we didn't take any honey from them because we weren't sure if they would make it through the winter if we did. Last spring was horrible! Most people around here planted their gardens 3 times because it would just begin to warm up, and then we would get a frost.

Not much fruit out here last year, either. And with all the construction close to our home, there were lots and lots of trees cut down. We all think the reason the bees struggled last summer was the weather killing so much of the fruit trees, flower gardens, vegetable gardens, and the loss of the trees. Hopefully we'll have a better year this year!

2 comments:

darius said...

That's really exciting, and encouraging, about the bees surviving!

Congrats.

TJ said...

Yes, we are really excited to see how well they are doing this year.

4 more hives to set up this year, too! New packs (nucs) of bees are arriving on May 7th to be installed in their new hives on May 8th :) Lots of honey this year we hope!