Frances and the Bee

  Our bees have been busy, so I'm sharing some photos from our most recent inspection. The bees need at least 60 pounds of honey to make it through the winter, so we're doing our best to help them reach that goal.  We're hoping for even more honey than that, so that we can share in the bounty, but we are really hoping that we can get these girls through the winter.   Here's a photo of some white-capped honeycomb.  Isn't is beautiful? This is just what the bees spend so much energy on to produce and protect...and I love to have it in my morning coffee and on a hot piece of buttered toast.  Capped Honeycomb     Below is a photo of the queen excluder.  Not all beekeepers use these, but we're giving it a try. We put this on top of the second deep super.  The space is big enough for a worker bee to pass through, but not the queen (hence, queen excluder).  This helps ensure that any boxes placed above it are filled with honey st...

The North Hive Gets a Honey Super - Photo by Mr. Bee Our North Hive was ready for the first honey super!  This is the next box we've added which the girls will stock not with brood, but food stores. A bee's main food store is honey.  We'll reserve this honey for the bees for winter, so we're crossing our fingers that they can fill it up and we can add another box to harvest for ourselves.  (Fingers still crossed.) Today I'll share a little about the differences between honey bees and the other insects they are sometimes confused with. Many of these tips come from Beekeeping For Dummies . Many people mistakenly lump all insects with stingers into the "bee" category. Honeybees are usually gentle in nature, and true bees are covered in hair and they use pollen and nectar from plants as their food source.  Away from their hive, they are non-aggressive.  They are not apt to sting, since they die afterwards, unless they feel the hive or their honey is be...