Bee Blog NEW BackYardHive Blog!
May 21st, 2008
We’re excited to be joining the blogging world so that we can bring you our experiences with
our bees and all things bees! Look for our first entry this evening. We’re running off to capture a swarm
right now and will report on our adventures!
I’m looking forward to your words about bees!
We installed a swarm on May 6, 2008(thanks to help from Karen) into our new top bar hive….it was really pretty easy. As of June 25, the bees have constructed about 16 combs and we just removed the false back to allow them the maximum room. The hive seems to be filling up quickly. One thing that I noticed on June 25 was that the bees are gathering at the entrance and just “hanging out” there (maybe 30-40 bees total. They had not done this in earlier days of the hive.
Also, we came up with an improvised bee suit consisting of a Patagonia ski coat shell with a hood, a baseball cap and window screen material from Home depot. The only thing we had to buy was the screen material and it cost about $6 for a large roll. It worked very well….no one was stung.
It is fascinating to watch the bees at work. For the most part they seem to ignore me when I open the hive and lift out a comb.
Having fun in Centennial. - Dave
I’ve been observing both my new top bar hive and a “wild” hive up in a tree in our yard, and they both hang out on the “front porch” of the hive in about the same numbers at the same times… it seems to correlate with how hot the weather gets. It would appear that many have to sleep outside when the weather is hot. Last night was very cool and almost everyone slept inside their hives.
While watching the bees coming and going, I also noticed that the drones are lots louder on their approach to the hive, ergo the “drone” name I suppose. Watching the bees!!! Another reason to be late to work!!!