I know what you're thinking... "Enough with the bees already!". Well I've just not been able to get them out of my mind ever since I saw Al's bees. I've been following Phil Chandler, who is a huge proponent of the Top Bar Hive method of housing bees. The biggest difference is that the bees are able to make comb as they choose instead of being forced into building it exactly as imprinted on the frame in a standard hive. Al calls them "hippy bees", but I say "Free your bees... Free your mind."
One of Al's hives keeps insisting on swarming. He tried to get them to rejoin their old hive but they took off again just few days ago. He captured the swarm, and since he is heading up North for work he offered them to Rachelle and me. The pressure was now on to finish the Top Bar Hive that I had started last week thinking that I might catch a late swarm or at least be ready for next spring.
I picked up the bees sealed in a conventional hive this morning and was able to release them into their new Hippy Home late this afternoon. July is pretty late for a new colony to gather up enough stores to see them through the winter, but we'll give it a go and hopefully they'll make out OK.
6 comments:
Now both my sons are bee-keepers. Good luck with your hive.
Except our guys are year-round bees. At least that's what we thought until they absconded (different from swarmed) this afternoon at 14:10 Pacific. Interestingly, most of the hive is still here. But they were a swirling buzzing mass this afternoon. A sight to beehold.... ;)
This is really interesting, and really is a great cause. Love bees. We will be following their progress keenly.
Cool looking hive. We had to take a page from the U.S. foreign policy book, and stage a Coup d"etat. The queen was not laying enough brood and the hive was producing queens. So before an uprising took place, we installed a more compliant queen. All in the name of Democracy.... and Honey.
We will only allow western companies, without competition, extract the natural resources and use them for ourselves.
MITT ROMNEY 2012
Very cool. Hope you are hiving a beeutiful time with it! :)
Alas, the hive hath flown the coop, as it were. They came. They swarmed. They vamoosed. We'll try again next spring with less 'spirited' bees. Ones who know a good home when they see it.
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