My Mom is a beekeeper. I'm not too thrilled with bees (actually I hate bees and any other bugs) but the honey we get is delicious. The other day Mom checked on her bees to see if they were making honey. They make most of their honey between April and June, so Mom gets very curious about how much they are making, and she checks on them a lot. She's bee crazy.
Mom convinced my very good friend, Morgan, to help her with the beehives. None of us kids will. I hate bugs, James hates nature (you can read more about that here and here.) and John quit helping because every time he helped he got stung. Even if one single bee flew out of the hive it would make a beeline to John and sting him. Of course Morgan knew none of this, so she was very eager to help Mom. I went, too, to take pictures of them. I stayed in the van though, so consider yourself warned that some of the pictures aren't too good.
Mom was going to add another honey super to each hive. This is the box where the bees will store honey that Mom will eventually take. Here she is putting on her full suit. Normally she just wears her helmet and veil for a quick job like this, but she let Morgan wear that and she put on the full suit. I think Mom looks like she's ready to handle some hazardous waste.
Here she is helping Morgan put on her veil. You need to make sure it's snug, or a bee can squeeze under.
Mom put Morgan in charge of the smoker and carrying the tomato soup can.
When the bees build comb where Mom doesn't want it, she scrapes it off and puts it in the tomato soup can. Then she takes the comb in the house and melts it down for candles.
Here Mom is making sure the frames are the way they are supposed to be.
Morgan is very brave--she's not wearing shoes! The lines are from the window defroster. I made Mom close the hatch so bees wouldn't get into the van.
And here's Mom doing her thing (whatever that is!).
No comments:
Post a Comment