It was 90 F today. April 16 and 90 degrees! Poor Boston Marathon runners. Â Poor spinach seedlings. Poor beekeeper in her hot bee suit. The bees didn’t seem to mind it much, probably because until Saturday they were in Georgia, where they were bred. Â I shook two packages. So glad I got it all done …
Category Archives: bees
Building a Hive (ii): Building the Hive Bodies
After the frames, the boxes. The priority is two hive stands and four deeps, two for each of the new colonies and one for a swarm box. The four mediums as honey supers, and one shallow that I want to experiment with will be for later. I still had two bottom boards, among which is …
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Reversing Brood Boxes on the Dandelion
After planting hundreds of fava beans, peas and trellises, and transplanting chard, lettuce and spinach, I looked at that hive, saw the bees hard at work, and knew it was now or never to go deep into the hive to see if I needed to do a brood box reversal. First I took off the …
Building a Hive (i): Assembling the Frames
Last week some of our BEElieve group met at the house of A., who was the first to pick up his bee package (that morning). The package looked very robust, with very few dead bees at the bottom. We went out to admire the setting of the hive, then A. hived the bees as I …
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Colony 1 and a Beautiful, Strange Bee
This has been some bee season already. Last year I was still mourning the imminent death of my colony (though it didn’t happen). This season we are, according to a local hive inspector, already in the month of May. Yesterday, finding it suddenly quite warm and seeing all the bees hanging out “on the porch” …
Fun Designing
This for the bees. I’m going to make my own hive bodies (boxes, bottom board, inner and outer covers). I’ll buy the frames and foundation. This for the water catchment, on Craiglist, for $100. Just need to borrow someone’s truck to pick up two of them. But the majority of fun is being had with …
Hive Opening for the BEElieve Folks
The Transition Wayland BEElieve group met yesterday in my apiary, aka the “bee yard”, that is, in the close vicinity of my one hive (soon to be three!), for the first hive opening of the year. This is a cross post with the one I posted on the Transition Wayland blog, called “Wayland Voices“. ~ …
BEElieve Beekeepers Group and Feeding the Bees
One of my most favorite projects with Transition Wayland is the BEElieve group. We sent out calls for beekeepers and bee enthusiasts in Wayland at the beginning of the year on our website and in the local media. Within two months, we had twenty people on the email list. We held our first meeting last …
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350 Poems – Poem 3
This video poem was created on 25 August 2011 and sent off – digitally, exceptionally – on the same day. Also exceptionally, the recipient sent me his poem first. That was a wonderful surprise! Thank you! I also got back several beautiful, original poems from both the first and the second addressees. The first actually …
First Honey Super
On 15 July the Apiguard treatment was finished (the bees cleaned out the tray) and my friend, neighbor and fellow Transitioner Andrea helped me put the first honey super onto the hive. These are the bees in the top box: great numbers and all looking healthy. Frames and frames heavy with honey. Eggs too! Andrea …