Everyone Should Keep Bees

I have been putting off this blog because I haven't felt like gushing my heart out about beekeeping awesomeness, but there comes a time when you just have to do it (plus I have some cool pics!)...




 < The top of the hive consists of the outer (pictured) and inner covers... and of course a weight to keep it on (pictured)

< The body of the hive consists of  bottomless boxes called "supers" and they come in 3sizes (or heights), Deep, Medium and Shallow. Inside the supers are horizontal stacks of frames (which we will get into later).

 < The bottom of the hive is called the "baseboard." Most are slanted downwards, and almost every hive you come across will be off the ground in some fashion. Here I have the hive perched on cinder blocks (common technique).




Of course there are many different kinds of hives. The one I just described is called a Langstroth hive. Named after a man with the same name, who lived many of his years in West Philly and wrote a revolutionary book in 1852 called "The Hive and the Hone Bee."

This is a picture of me in my full regalia. I have what beekeepers call an "inspector's suit," which just means I only have the top part of what could be a really cool thing to wear all the time in the future. The rest of the requirements are simply a pair of jeans and shoes.

This was the beginning part of the inspection where I am looking through the top section of frames in the upper most super.

My mom took this picture (thanks mom!)

OK, I'm starting to get way deep into the hive here... On most inspections the primary goal is to make sure the queen is alive and that she is strong. You can find both of these things out without getting anywhere close to the actual queen herself.  Basically, you just need to find the super level she is laying in and look for eggs (which she would have had to lay within 2 days) and the shape, or pattern, of her laying (kind of a smiley-face from end to end on the frame).

As you can see in this picture the different supers in the body of the hive have been separated and laid aside as I inspect downward through the hive.

Here I'm holding up an individual frame.  This frame is sort of special because it's what you would call a "foundation-less" frame.  It's standard in commercial beekeeping to insert plastic foundation into the middle of each frame so the bees have something to build off of (even though they don't need it).

Can you guess how this frame would look different if I used a foundation?

 Backtracking, this is what the hive was doing when I pulled off the outer cover. They have built comb between the inner cover (wire mesh) and the tops of the the frames in the super.

This all had to get removed to have access to the hive, but don't worry all the honey I got from this comb removal went start into a jar in my mom's kitchen.

And the final picture of this entry is another shot of the bees reaction to be ripping off the inner cover.  When I did that I exposed a lot of honey that was in those cells. The bee's instinct when this happens? To eat everything they can get their pokey little proboscis on.






Thanks for eating this one up! I'll be back soon to drop some more knowledge if you want to learn...

                                                          JessesGone