Our Friends, the Bees

We became beekeepers a couple years ago.  My grandfather was a beekeeper and during my entire childhood I enjoyed eating the honey that he harvested.  It's only recently (the last few years) that the last of the honey from his harvest was eaten, and he's been deceased for twenty years.  Mike and I decided to get bees when we still lived in an apartment, but our friends really wanted us to keep the hive at their place.  So we did!

Our first hive! (2014)

We ordered a nuclear colony from a local beekeeper that raises notoriously gentle bees, New World Carniolans, specifically.  There is a clear advantage to getting a nuclear colony, as opposed to a package of bees, because there are already five frames with drawn comb and the queen has established her brood frames.

Sometimes I like to pretend that I am the beekeeper, but that's absolutely incorrect.  Mike is our beekeeper and he is fantastic at it!

Here Mike opened up the hive to show a few visitor to our friends' farm.  They had never been "up close" to bees before.

Now that we have our own property, we plan to expand our apiary efforts here!