Beer, Bees and Birth
After some hard work, sweat, a couple of stings and a whole lot of swearing I managed to inspect both hives. The inspection was long overdue as is evidenced by yesterday's swarm. I removed a bunch of comb (watch the video for an explanation) and got my first taste of honey from my bees! That's honey made literally in my back yard! I can't believe it! Funny thing is, I don't much like honey. But I'm looking forward to the flavor growing on me and using the surplus to make mead. And, of course using it to make beer (Mmm,beer!)!
Now check out this bee being born!
Makes me want to cry, too.
ReplyDeleteWow! How cool! Did it work? Did the other bees come back? I hope so! Btw, I would TOTALLY take your honey. I love honey and just ran out. Sadly it's kinda expensive here in Chile. Too bad we don't live closer! Does the rest of the family enjoy it? It's yummy on bread with butter. :D Hugs! <3 Kaia
ReplyDeleteBelieve me, when I get some honey, I'll be sending some to you and Antonio! Unfortunately, the bees didn't come back. But half of them stayed behind, and they seem to be thriving. Everyone else loves honey. I love cooking with it, though! Can't wait to use it in some barbecue sauce, bread making, and, of course, brewing beer!
ReplyDeleteI don't get it... why do you want to have those mites move in? I don't see the benefit of removing the plastic insert and having the bees make their own wax if you're just producing mites and have to take it out and feed it to the chickens. Am I misunderstanding?
ReplyDeleteBy the way, some of my fondest culinary memories are chewing on fresh bees wax filled with honey. Yummm!
Mites are almost always found in a bee hive. But left unchecked, they can overwhelm a colony and cause it to be less productive and even contribute to it's collapse! One way to combat mites is to remove the plastic foundation from one of the frames. After the workers build wax in the empty frame the queen comes along and usually lays drone eggs. The mites prefer to lay their eggs in drone larvae, rather than worker larvae (drone larvae take longer to develop giving the mite babies more time to feast). Then the bee keeper removes the frame with the drone larvae (drone's just sit around the hive anyway, living off the hard work of the worker bees) which are likely filled with mites. All the mites that would have ended up living in the hive, now become, in my case, chicken food!
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