the beekeeper

THE BEEKEEPER
its is official
as of april 27 2015 i am a beekeeper

i have always wanted to do this for years
so a few months ago i saw a class on beekeeping
and
bee friendly landscaping was offered at my favorite nursery
the natural gardener in austin

that day this energetic addish speaker hooked me

i attended her beginners class
i attended a day long beekeeping class at
the ladybird wildflower center

then
i attended a four hour hands on clinic at her house
getting a chance to take a hive apart and
practicing beekeeping

bluebonnet engelmans daisy prairie verbena winecups
now on my property there is so much native plants
like these available to provide the nectar
and
pollen that the bees will need
even during the winter months
hundreds of sources
heck ive even let my cilantro broccoli kale lettuce spinach
etal all go to seed in my garden
to provide sources for bee food

so
i bought me a top bar hive
it sits on legs
so its much easier on the back
but doesnt make quite as much honey as the standard
langstroth hive
the one thats usually shown in photos

i also have several books on beekeeping that ive partially read

so like preparing for childbirth and a new baby
you think you are ready
but you really arent

so off on an hour trip i went to get my bees
a new queen bee and her 10000 bees
called a nuc

it was duct taped
now thats a good sign
so things wouldnt shift around
disturbing the honeycombs and the bees
hoping i didnt breakdown or have a wreck on the way home
i didnt want to get on the news

so i arrived at home with my brood

fired up my smoker to slow them down some
boy were they ever ticked off at me for moving them
then
i think i got smoked more than they did

i opened up the top bar hive enough to put in the honeycombs
loaded with bees honey pollen nectar bee larva
and
to put a jar of sugar water to provide a food source for them
until they could get established enough to live on what
they made themselves

the queen bee had managed to escape from her cage
somewhere onto one of the honeycombs
i opted to wait a few days to inspect the hive again
to insure she was ok
since
those bees were so ticked off
they were aswarming around me like a scene from the
old movie the birds

i eventually got them
well most of them into the hive

having it mostly all closed up so they could only get
in and out through this opening
with the blue excluder set so the queen couldnt escape
but the worker bees could go back and forth

then
i backed off to let them calm down a lot

later that day near twilight
my wife she and i went out to check on our new babies
looking in from an observation window
they were all swarming around the honeycombs
inside
and
worker bees were landing on the excluder with their legs
all full of yellow pollen
and
im sure they were full of nectar to put in the individual
combs that would eventually become
country n honey

so exciting after all these years

what i realize is
like a new baby coming home
im not sure what to do to do things right
but
i will stumble through as i know that once this
hive gets established there is not a lot of work involved
just
a lot of rewards
country n honey

the contented
beekeeping

organicgreen doctor