A couple of years ago I received a phone call from my father. He asked me if I would start a new hobby with him. With out asking what it was I said yes. Then I asked what is it we are getting into, he said bee keeping. Ever since then it has been a adventure. Our first year we did not do so good it went well during the warmer months the bees were making comb and brood and honey like they are supposed to. We thought we where going to be in the honey but as the fall months approached we didn’t get any honey. You see the 2 bottom boxes are the brood boxes and the ones you stack on those are smaller in height and those are called the supers. The brood boxes you can’t take anything from those are just for the bees. The supers though are for you, filled with honey. So at the end of that first year the brood box’s were full so we thought if we make it through the winter all we have to do is have them refill them with honey and we can add the super’s but as luck would have it the harsh winter that year claimed all of our bees.
The following spring we ordered more bees, they are not cheep. This year we have had a head start all of the comb was made from the previous bees so all we needed them to do was refill what was gone and start adding the comb and honey to the suppers which does take some time. We kept a close eye on them checking them every couple of weeks to see if we needed to add any more boxes or not, you don’t want to add until the last couple of frames are about full in the lower box. After a couple of weeks we checked again because the supers are shorter in size, so they fill up faster. Each super holds close to 20lbs of honey. The reason you want to check is if your bees fill up and have no more some times they will swarm and take off.
Over the last couple of years we have caught 3 swarms. One from a guy that lives down the street he was cutting down a tree and it was hollow and the bees had made a hive in there. The next swarm came from a phone call I received from my work. They had a swarm of bees that landed on a truck and were in the bumper and behind the headlight. I was able to catch the queen along with all the other bees in a cardboard box. Once I had the queen in the box the other bees just started to fly in there because that’s where the queen was, she gives of a pheromone that they go to. The last swarm of bees I was able to capture was another phone call from work and they were under a jersey block, which made it a lot trickier to catch.
Bees are on the decline from 2012 to now so my Dad and I are doing our part to help the bees, not just for the bees but also for ourselves. If you eat local raw honey it will help you with allergies especially if started at a young age. So support your local bee keepers to help get the bee population up for the plants that they pollinate and the honey that they make.
