Must Bee Summer

A summer day at 73˚!  The grass grew today for sure.  Within the past three days we’ve gone from an elusive “is it green, yet?” to “wow, Wyoming’s thrown her green gown on!”

While I am trying to finish up some yard work, once it was warm enough, I gave up my rake and lawnmower and traded them for my bee suit!

Yay for BEES!

With the loss of two hives to mice this winter, I’ve worked them over, mainly adding 1/4″ mesh wire to entrances, and my brother and nephew have created some new top bars for me to replace those weak, broken, or non-existent bars from Mesopotamia.  I took the hive I built (it needs a name!), down to Daniel’s.  He has had a hive in a small boxelder tree, and I was hoping they may be feeling a bit crowded this spring and be attracted to this hive.

Tess and I wandered back to see how active they were…

NO BEES.  What?

Tess insisted she had tons of bees around.  Well, they sure weren’t using *that* tree anymore.  Who knows if they starved over the winter or what, but *they* sure weren’t flying.

Taking her word that she had lots of bees still, I set up the hive with empty bars, some comb, and a cotton ball with lemongrass oil on it.  By the time I leveled it up and arranged it so I liked it… there were 5 bees flying around it!!!

Holy cow!  There were honey bees!  They were interested!

This is perfect!

If the scout bees like it, and they are ready to swarm, I will be a lucky beekeeper!  In fact, if this one gains a swarm in the next bit, I will take down my Golden hive as well, and see if I could be so lucky as to gain back two swarms!

Lots of exclamation marks, but, hey, I was excited.

Didn’t we name this hive??? I thought we did, but I cannot think of it!  Please help me out… It seems like it matched Mesopotamia (which is no longer a MESS, by the way! though the bees are still cranky)

 

Find me here!

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