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Monday, February 23, 2009

The Blue Heron Project

Metro Atlanta Beekeepers' Association will now provide hive inspections to help new beekeepers learn about beekeeping in a hands-on way at three locations.

One location is the Atlanta Zoo; another is the Dunwoody Nature Center; and the third is at the Blue Heron Nature Preserve.

Each site will have two working hives that belong to Metro members and will be used several times during bee season as inspection sites for the club.

As you may remember, I've already been involved with several beekeepers who have hives at Blue Heron. Previous posts are here and here. So I was thrilled when Kevin, the person in charge of the community garden at Blue Heron, got an OK from the board of directors to let us manage two hives there.

I'm going to have one of the hives and my friend and fellow beekeeper, Julia, will manage the other with the help of her two sons. They have been keeping bees longer than I have, so I am sure we will all learn from this experience.

Metro purchased two nucs for us and we provide everything else - the hive boxes, maintenance, etc. The nucs arrived (early, isn't it?) on Saturday. So we are feeding them in the nucs until Wednesday when Julia, Sam, her youngest son, and I will install them in the hives. Below is a slideshow of our experience so far.

We got a pretty good record of our adventure, but nobody had the camera when a bee stung me inside my hood. When I took off the hood, there was another bee in my hair. We all swatted at my hair as I hung my head upside down - I'm sure it was quite a sight, but we didn't get pictures!



Click on the pictures in the slideshow and you'll be taken to Picasa Web albums where you can view it in a larger frame.

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