Things are really getting busy! It is hard to keep up with posting! I'm not sure the days will be long enough to accomplish everything this season, but I'm going to try! One of the chores today was some bee keeping, so this is a #walkwithme as I check on our bees and do my greenhouse chores!
The rhubarb is waking up!
Every day (the nice ones) first thing I roll up my greenhouse sides. As you can see it is a primitive system! There are plans to add a bar to roll it up easily...but that is not a huge priority right now. The bungee cords work great!
Logs and wood hold it down every night and when it rains
Rolled up! Airflow and bees for the plants!!
Some nettle and dandelions in the greenhouse
Ok, now the bees!!! My friend Lyndsey owns this hive, we keep it here. We sponsor it, if you will. We are getting 3 of our own this month and will be getting out queens from these guys!
Lyndsey in the bee suit. I don't have one yet, so I stayed a bit back
The bees you see, are angry right now. There is no pollen yet really and they are hungry. 3 weeks ago, Lyndsey gave them sugar to tie them over. You will see this on the top brooder, it looks like snow! The other day, in case they ran out we left a bag of sugar for them outside the hive. Yesterday we added a frame from another hive that was full of comb and honey so they could eat real food!! There is only a week or so until there will be flowers budding. They will be fine now.
The full frame ready to go into our hive
Top of the hive open
The bees have devoured the sugar. It covered the whole top when we added it 3 weeks ago. The pieces left are shells...crumbly
The bag of sugar water, there are slits on it where the bees are clumped together. Drink it up guys!
A bee got inside my hood so I'm back a bit now haha!
Checking frames for the queen. We need to make sure she's in here, but judging from the amount of bees and eggs she must be here
7 frames in, we found her!! See the bee with the yellow dot? That's her!!!
Closer view
Now both brooder are open, the bottom one is where the loaded frame will go, it has less frames used so we are encouraging them to start using it.
Slashing the honey comb first will make the bees try to fix it, drawing attention to it so they start eating it. Lyndsey did this, but I was running away from some bees at that point. Scary stuff hahaha!
Close up of the frame we removed. There is some pollen! How cool is the honeycomb they build?? So much respect for bees. Amazing ❤
No pics of reassembling the hive, the bees were so crazy that I couldn't get close. I am so happy they have some honey to eat. I really like this way of bee keeping, we won't extract honey until they have made too much. I appreciate them so much as pollinators, I want them to be healthy, happy bees! Can't wait for our other hives!!
I leave you with another shot of rhubarb because it is so cute #ilovebabyrhubarbleaves
I hope you all have the best day!
Thank you for reading! Take care of you and yours ❤