Tag Archives: hive

Storm Preparations (last week)

Early last week the entire southeastern US was hit with some pretty severe weather. We were woken up at 5:45 am on Tuesday by the University’s warning sirens, indicating a tornado warning was in effect. Not a nice way to be woken from a deep sleep! Fortunately, we didn’t get anything but some heavy rain, but further east in NC there were some tornadoes and golf ball size hail. The forecasted severe weather got us thinking about what we should do

Getting used to the new digs

After spending the first night in their new home, there was plenty of action going on in the apiary the next day. At first I was a little concerned with it, were they still agitated from the hiving, were they robbing, or something else? Then I remembered reading about this. My guess is that they were doing their orientation flights! Makes sense, since they were shipped in a small box from god-knows-where, and unceremoniously dumped into a strange hive on

Home sweet home: hiving the bees!

Whew! Yesterday was an exciting one, welcoming home some 60,000 or so new pets! Now that the girls are settled in, here’s a recap of the hive installation: The weather was not ideal, a little cool and rainy but the nice folk at Bailey Bee Supply assured us that it would be fine, and in fact maybe help, in that the bees would hunker down in their new hives and not fly so much during the install. After picking out

Home is where the hive is

I’ve spent several weekend afternoons in the last month or so prepping for the arrival of the ladies. I ordered 2 8-frame “garden hives” from Brushy Mountain Bee Farm, along with all the anticipated extras: medium hive bodies, frames, foundation, hive top feeders, screened bottom boards, bee brush, and an extra bee veil for Rob.  I already have a smokin’ hot smoker and my own bee veil thanks to a Christmas present from my sis! One of the first things