Tag: bee video

beehives, Beekeepers, Beekeeping, Bees, family, Homesteading, honeybee, Urban Farming

What Do Bees Taste Like?

by Meredith A. MayLeave a Comment on What Do Bees Taste Like?

Ask a kid.

Every fall, I remove spare frames of drone larvae from my hives to help keep mite counts low. I freeze the larvae and give them to my friends who have chickens.

But in this case, the boys got to the bugs first. They tried to get me to try one, but I was too chicken.

 

Apiculture, Beekeepers, Beekeeping, Bees, Environment, Gardening, honeybee, Urban Farming

Relocating a Beehive

by Meredith A. May4 Comments on Relocating a Beehive

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A friend recently told me she wanted to move her beehive across the yard, about 10 feet from its spot.  As incredibly smart as bees are, they can’t find their hive if you move it to a different place in the same bee yard. They will return to the old location, circle in a confused cloud, and perish overnight while their home is sitting, literally, feet away.

So if you want to move your hive, you have to shift it less than a foot a day, to let the bees acclimate, until you have your hive where you want.

OR

You move it miles away.

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The bees will sense they are in unfamiliar turf, make short exploratory flights until they orient themselves and then settle in to their new zip code.

So, how do you move a live hive of bees?

Carefully. You need ratchet tie-downs to secure the hive boxes. You need to staple mesh over the hive entrance to keep the bees inside during transport. And you should move it either before dawn, before the bees wake, or late after sundown when they have returned from foraging in the sunlight. That way you won’t strand thousands of bees while they are out collecting nectar and pollen.

Put the hive in a truck bed, tie it down again, and drive like there are infinite tomorrows. Make ’em honk!

Today some friends and I relocated a hive to Connecticut Friendship Garden in San Francisco’s Potrero Hill neighborhood. Happy to report my bee operation, and my heart, are both expanding.

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Welcome to your new home! Here is video of the bees checking the place out:

Apiculture, Beekeepers, Beekeeping, Bees, Entomology, Environment, Gardening, hive mind, Homesteading, Urban Farming

Bee Lesson Number Five

by Meredith A. May3 Comments on Bee Lesson Number Five

Curious what the inside of the hive looks like from a bee’s POV, I put my iPhone at the entrance with the lens facing inward, and pressed video slomo.

What I captured was pure comedy, and another life lesson: When you lose your footing and fall down, inspecially in front of a crowd, there’s nothing you can do but dust yourself off and take another step forward. Like it never even happened.