Vamos Homestead Adventure!: We're bee-having! :-)

I am very excited today to share this blog with you! I'm excited because, although we still don't have land to start our homestead on, we do have bees! Dominik and Elena built 6 bee traps late this spring and we put them up at friends places around the area. One of those traps (it is more like temporary accommodation when the bees naturally swarm- they can freely come and go from it) attracted a lovely swarm of bees! The bees moved in while Dominik and Jonathan were in Austria, so by the time that they returned the bees had already built up a lot of comb and were producing honey. Dominik managed to get the trap down out of the tree, despite the weight, and we relocated the trap to another friends house then, for various bee-keeping logistical reasons.

Normally the swarm should be re-located from the trap into a hive within a week or so of being caught. However, as we have a few projects underway (like building our cottage), we were quite late in the job that we did today. We came back from the cottage on Wednesday afternoon and, after a slew of activities, Dominik and Elena built the hive for the bees. We are using the horizontal hive method, as explained by Layens or Langstroth, and currently popularised by the Russian scholar and naturalist, Leonid Sharashkin. In this method we won't have boxes being stacked on top of each other, rather we will use a hive which is quite large width-side (i.e. horizontally). We have placed a divider in the hive now and as the bees expand their numbers we can then take the divider out and give them more space. We have trapped local bees rather than paying for imported bees, and we will be trying to treat them in as natural as way as possible. They should have a live which mimicks that of living in the wild.

We had prepared ourselves with bee hats and suits and gloves. We were amused to see that the bee suits were made of Tyvek- the same material that we were using to wrap our cottage up when we didn't have walls. Having moved the hive near to the trap, Dominik proceded to open the trap. The bees were flying in and out and were crowding around the opening slit of the trap. It is a lovely, healthy hive. Once the trap was open he had to take a scraper and pry the frames apart from each other. It was then that he realised that our delay in moving the swarm over meant that they had produced a LOT of comb and honey already! We are using foundationless frames, meaning that they have wood only on the top and part-way down the sides. The bees build the comb straight up and down, no matter how the hive or trap is sitting, so it is important that everything is level or else it would be difficult to get the frames out. Isn't it amazing that bees know how to build on a 90 degree angle?

So, we had a lot of comb. Some of it broke off as he moved the frames over to the hive. This caused the death of a bunch of bees who were either under the comb or were then drowned in honey. Yes, we learned a lot from this first experience! We hadn't smoked the bees and at first they were quite calm, but as the moving process continued the did become somewhat more agitated. Our bee suits did their job and we weren't stung. I have to say that it was a bit un-nerving to be surrounded by swarming bees. When I helped Dominik move the hive over a bit at the end of this process, the bees were everywhere and the sound of the buzzing was quite loud when you're surrounded by them.

My Aunt Martha did, however, have a bee fly under the brim of her hat and as she removed it she was stung on the finger. She was very calm and pulled the stinger out and now we've treated it with baking soda. Dominik went back this evening and added some more frames to the hive, on a lower level so we will have less comb and hopefully then less breakage next time.

Sorry it's blurry- it was a glove problem!

Horizontal hive with a divider in it.

We did have some broken comb to deal with so we put the larger portion of it in and near to the hive, as the bees will clean it up and use it. We did bring a smaller portion home and we squeezed it, strained it and put it in jars. We harvested 5 cups of honey!!! This was a completely unexpected bounty and it is such an encouragement to us! My Aunt and Parents have found the entire process interesing, as none of us have any experience with bee keeping. The children are learning so much about bees and honey and now we have the wax to use and make things out of. We are really loving having the bees and it makes us look forward to other projects when we do finally find a piece of land on which to build a homestead to call our own!