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Sunday, March 25, 2012

I Should Bee Happy, but I Bee Tired

What a long bee day!  By the time I left home to drive to Rabun County today, I had already hived three bee families - the swarm and two packages at Morningside.  The drive to Rabun didn't result in hiving any bees, but I still had three more packages to install.

When I got back to Atlanta around 4:30, I met Jeff at Chastain to install a package in a hive there.  Julia and Noah were there installing their two packages.  We have these bees thanks to Julia who drove up toe Lula yesterday to pick them up from Don Kuchenmeister (brought home five packages for me - thanks so much, Julia).

Julia installed her bees in equipment very kindly donated by Leslie Gerber who felt bad about our losses at Blue Heron due to the vandalism and our general bad luck at the Blue Heron.  I have donated equipment too from Lisa who gave us her hive for Blue Heron and a set of 8 frame boxes.  I'll be using her boxes on my hive at Chastain, but forgot it today for the install.

So here's my day:

8:30  Collect the swarm from my azalea
9:15  Mix up sugar syrup for bees at Morningside
9:30  Pack car with equipment and bees and go to Morningside Community Garden to install two packages there
10:30  Return home and install collected swarm into top bar hive
**Left swarm to gather in collection box while I installed hives at Morningside
11:00  Mix up more sugar syrup to take to Rabun County, pack car for drive to Rabun County with two packages of bees and equipment for install
**Reminded self to take sugar syrup in a spray bottle, my pocket knife, a "church key" to open the jars of syrup that come with the package, and lunch for the road
11:30  Drove to Rabun County - ate lunch as I drove - no time otherwise
1:15 Arrive at Community Garden and find that I don't need to install bees there - a swarm has moved in - so I just inspected the hives - good laying queen in both hives
2:15 Stop at mountain house literally for 10 minutes to check on things there
2:30 Drive back to Atlanta (still with packages in the car)
4:40 Meet Jeff at Chastain and install bees there
5:30 Drive home to install two more packages of bees at home
6:45 ALL DONE - what a BEE DAY

Since I've posted photos of the swarm and Rabun County in two earlier posts, these are pictures of the installs at Morningside, Chastain and my house.



3 comments:

  1. Oh, my you have been busy as a bee!!!

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  2. Anonymous10:09 AM

    Do you wear gloves during hive inspections? If not do you get stung? I've only been a beekeeper for a year so I still wear my gloves. I'm learning to move slower and more gently but I'm not there yet!

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  3. Usually I don't wear gloves - we do have this one hive at Jeff's that we call Colony Square (a tongue in cheek Atlanta joke because it grew so tall) and they are angry mean bees. I wear EVERYTHING when I inspect them, but for most hives, no gloves - just a jacket and veil.

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