Dadzoo Learns a Lesson, Perhaps?

Posted on August 14, 2014 by Momzoo

I don’t have any pictures for this post. Sadly Dadzoo didn’t want me to take any pictures, I don’t really understand why, they would have been awesome. Let me tell you why….

You know how sometimes it can be really easy to get so comfortable doing something that you don’t take the necessary precautions? For example, let’s say you keep bees. Let’s say for the past two summers you’ve kept those bees you’ve never been stung, and slowly you stop wearing your protective gear, and even then the bees don’t sting you. Let’s say that one evening you need to put a new box on the hive, a quick job, takes less than ten minutes. Because it is such a quick job and because you’ve never been stung, once again the protective clothing stays in it’s box and for the first time you don’t get the smoker going and you don’t smoke the bees to make them docile. Because, well, you’ve never been stung before and this is a quick job, surely you won’t need the smoke or your hat and drape, surely.

I’m betting you can guess where this is going….

Despite all your (ahem) preparation you do end up with a sting squarely above your eye brow. But no biggy, sure it hurt, but you’ve never had a reaction to a bee sting before.

And everything looks good….until about 24 hours later, your fore head feels funny, right about the spot the bee got you, and you look in the mirror and it’s starting to swell ever so slightly. No biggy, bee sting will do that, right? Well, then through the evening it swells even more and more, you take Benadryl, still swells, you go to bed, certine it will be fine in the morning.

At five am the alarm goes off, you open your eyes…wait…..your eyes won’t open, well if you try hard enough, just maybe a crack…… You wake up your wife, she laughs, one eye is swollen shut the other about half way. After a call into work, you arrange a work from home day while your lovely, smart, talented wife spends the day applying ice, herbal salves, oils, zone therapy and infusions, by night you can open both eyes, but the swelling is still very much there. How will things be the next day you wonder? And where did I put my veil and smoker for next time.

Honey Harvest

Posted on September 5, 2013 by Momzoo

Cutting the comb off the frames

Little fingers (Boo I believe) picking honey comb to eat

More cutting, loving the honey rolling off the frames

Little Monkey, her fingers in the way wanting a sweet treat

Golden honey comb

ready to strain

Golden goodness dripping from the filter

Filling the jars

Pints of our own honey. We only harvested 4 pints this year, but we are happy with our first year with our one little hive.

Opening the Hive

Posted on May 30, 2013 by Momzoo

This post is very picture heavy, I’m sorry but I just couldn’t decide which ones to include and exclude, so you get them all!

Two weeks after we got our hive Dadzoo and his apprentice Boo opened ‘er up to see how things were going.
It looked good, really good.
So good they had to add another box, and we are now cautiously optimistic about our future honey production.

This is my favorite picture. It shows new eggs, newly hatched larva, older larva, capped cells, adult bees, the whole life cycle in one photograph.

Bees!

Posted on May 2, 2013 by Momzoo

I have wanted bees for a long, long time. We have talked about it quite a bit, but we have never really had a good place to keep them, or we didn’t have enough money to get stared. There always seemed to be a reason to put it off another year.

Except now.

A good friend of ours talked Dadzoo into taking a bee keeping class this winter. Dadzoo took the class, became interested and put in an order for a beehive and a packet of bees. We are officially beekeepers now (Dadzoo will argue that there is a difference between “beekeepers” and “beehavers”)

Boo decided that she wanted to help with the bees, that she would “own” this part of Quail Run. When it was time to pick up the bee packet she came along, and quickly became friends with a rogue bee that wanted to hang around our packet.

Here is what four thousand bees look like. The sound they all make together is amazing.

The evening of our pick up we placed the bees in their hive.

(this is the queen bee, I couldn’t get a good picture of her, in her little cage, there is a sugar plug that the queen and the workers will eat through to release her into the colony, this gives the colony extra time to accept her as their queen)

Note the lack of a bee suit or veils. Dadzoo only got three stings, and Boo didn’t get a single one. Bees only sting if they feel threatened, so moving slowly and quietly around the hive, even when they are this active and agitated, keeps the beekeepers from being stung much.