Johnstown bee trip!

I have a hive I won at a bee seminar in Albany. It is a very beautiful hive, made from cedar, with a nice copper covered peaked top. It's a gorgeous English country style that will look great in my garden. Once I get the cast off (this Friday is not soon enough), I plan to set it up, even if it remains empty for a bit; it'll at least leave me a large corner of my living room emptier than it's been all Spring :)

So in order to get a bit more comfortable with my hands literally in a hive -- well, with my ONE hand in a hive, anyway -- I tagged along with a couple others to a bee workshop in Johnstown. It was a "bee removal" from a tree. When people say they can remove bees alive, they do it but to the detriment of whatever the bees have housed themselves in. In this case, it was a hollow tree.

Here is Dan the Beekeeper (not Dan, my husband) whacking the heck out of a tree stump to split a side off. He had already done the prep with a chainsaw earlier, leaving time for the bees to calm again before using a sledgehammer to finish the splitting while everyone was there. You see the hive body/box on the ground to the right?



I am amazed that the bees weren't more agitated. They were very mellow bees -- the exact type one would want in a backyard apiary.



Once the side was removed and the comb was exposed, using a knife, widths of the comb were cut and removed and placed in frames. We had to make certain that we maintained the "up" of the comb, putting the top on the top of the frame. I was surprised that rubber bands were used to hold the comb in place until the bees attached the comb to the wooden frame! Apparently the bees will chew the bands off when they are no longer needed! Cool!



Unfortunately, my camera's batteries were not up to the day's pictures and it kept shutting off on its own. So all I have is the beginning of the sledgehammer and the removal of the side with the comb attached to it.



After this point, we were all quite busy. I wore a bee hat/hood and long pants and a long sleeved shirt, no gloves! I have read that less bees are killed without gloves and that agitates the bees less in return. One has more dexterity with no gloves. On this day of transferring the bees from the log to the hive, only one person out of the seven there was stung, and that person was the Master Beekeeper who had his hands IN the hive the most!



I know my sense of fun varies from many...



...but I tell you it was exciting fun!!