Are You Interested in Beekeeping?

Beekeeping is the newest cool hobby, and Kevin and I are joining in! Daddy kept bees as did his father before him, so I’m carrying on the tradition, using his tools and bee paraphernalia.

Bees are fascinating creatures and really intelligent, not to mention hard working. Remember the old saying, busy as a bee? It’s true! The bee hive is always humming with much activity. Startup costs for this hobby can be expensive, but we’ve inherited Daddy‘s equipment from his decades of beekeeping.

 

 

 

 

Here’s Kevin opening our new nuc of bees. A nuc is short for nucleus, a small colony of worker bees and a queen. It has all the elements of a Langstroth Hive except it has fewer frames (five) instead of the typical eight to ten.

We transferred the five frames with bees into our waiting super with five new frames. The waiting frames have sheets of bees wax (foundation) for the bees to begin building honeycomb in which they’ll store nectar and honey, and the queen will lay eggs for new bees.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Our new bees are already hard at work!

 

 

 

 

 

And with the new hobby comes another fun pastime…taking pictures of bees pollinating our beautiful flowers.

 

 

We’re looking forward to harvesting some of our own honey sometime soon!

What have you been up to this spring? Could beekeeping be in your future? Let me know in the comments.