It is hard to fully appreciate the scale of which my bees have multiplied in just a couple months in this picture. I video taped but the sound effects didn't transfer well. There was a nice humming sound coming from the mass of bees flying about outside the hive. I stood only 4 feet away when I took this picture but as usual because the sun was finally shined and the air was warm the bees were too busy to notice me standing there.
Thousands of bees were flying above the hive but unfortunately you can't see that in this picture. To see them in this fashion makes me wonder how someone with barely any yard at all could actually keep bees without the neighbors having a nervous breakdown. When my bees come out in large numbers like this they tend to occupy a good portion of our backyard which is over 1/2 an acre, and even then I keep waiting for the neighbors to protest a little.
I was happy to see the girls out and about this afternoon. I'm waiting for a more condusive moment to rearrange the bottom two hive bodies (a partial reversal), maybe when the third hive body is 80% full of honey.
Is the first year always so much work? I was envisioning a low maintenance thing where you harvest once a year...LOL! Glad they're happier!
It sounds like a lot but they really are low maintenance. I was telling the hubby the other day that I was surprised at how well they just take care of themselves, after the U of M course I sorta felt like I was committing to something that was going to limit how much I could travel with the family but it turns out it isn't really not so bad. Initially you check them every week and then about every two weeks and then about every month. They seem to require more attention when they are just getting started because you have to maintain enough sugar/syrup to get them filling out those frames before the nectar arrives in the wild.
The hardest part is the bees not following the book. LOL! Of course they do everything that either wasn't covered in class or covered very little. I'm going back to take part two of the class in spring 2011 and hopefully will have some questions answered. Crossing fingers that my bees make it that far.
I'm not looking forward to arranging hive bodies though. I feel like that will be the moment I earn my first sting :(
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