What's Buzz'n

I purchased my first two hives of bees in May, 1989 and have learned a great deal since then. My grandpa had bees when I was a kid and I was very interested in how they worked, so I dived right in and got some. Currently I have two hives. Here are some things I have learned since then:

Bees do not like to be moved.
Each hive has a personality of its own. Some are more ornery than others.
All bees are ornery on cloudy days, especially just before a storm.
Skunks scratch on the side of the boxes and eat the bees as they come out to defend the hive.
If you move a hive six inches to the right or left of its original position, the bees will be totally confused when they return to the hive.
Mice love to live in beehives over winter especially since the bees keep it warm.
I have seen honeybees drag an intruding bumblebee out of their hive.
If you store boxes of honey on your porch for even just one day and one bee finds out, you will have thousands of bees on your porch within one hour of their discovery.

This is a swarm of bees I chased into the hive with my smoker after waiting a few hours for them to find the honey themselves. Grandpa had fun watching me convince them to move in to their new home.

A farmer asked me to remove this colony of bees from his barn. Evidently they had been living there for at least a month, but had been hidden by tall grass. As you can see, the boys who lived there used mud balls to get the bees in a good mood for me. After three hours of work cutting out the comb and carefully placing it in my hive bodies, the bees did not survive. The queen was probably damaged in the process and since it was so late in the year I did not requeen.

What's Buzz'n

If you want more info, here is the Beekeeping Homepage

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