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I've been keeping this blog for all of my beekeeping years and I am beginning my 19th year of beekeeping in April 2024. Now there are more than 1300 posts on this blog. Please use the search bar below to search the blog for other posts on a subject in which you are interested. You can also click on the "label" at the end of a post and all posts with that label will show up. At the very bottom of this page is a list of all the labels I've used.

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I began this blog to chronicle my beekeeping experiences. I have read lots of beekeeping books, but nothing takes the place of either hands-on experience with an experienced beekeeper or good pictures of the process. I want people to have a clearer picture of what to expect in their beekeeping so I post pictures and write about my beekeeping saga here.Master Beekeeper Enjoy with me as I learn and grow as a beekeeper.

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Tuesday, August 04, 2020

Before....and After

These hives are at a community garden. Like many community gardens in Atlanta, this one is under Georgia Power lines. The workfolk for Georgia Power don't come anywhere near the bees so the area around the community garden gets mowed, but not this place where the apiary is.


I had a weed whacker in the mountains and now I've hired a guy who is cutting my place up there, so I brought the week whacker home. It's battery powered and should be perfect for this hillside apiary. Small catch - I've only used it twice before today and I don't really understand it. Took me a few minutes to remember how to turn it on and in the middle of using it on this tall grass, the protector device came off. Luckily the screw was still hanging onto the device and I rescued it. 


It looks a bit like the hives are drowning in the grass and you can't even see the entries except on the strapped hive which is the absconding hive which I've just moved here.

And here are the after shots:

The nuc hive where the bees came out to see what the heck was going on:


The absconding hive whose view of the hill is much better now:


The pesticide hive - again coming out to see what is going on. Also it was very hot, and they may have been out anyway - just hidden under the grass!:


Here are both of the original hives - the hive on the left was split about two weeks ago. I saw a bee flying in with pollen so maybe the queen is in this half of the split. I'm inspecting tomorrow so we'll see.


My weed whacking leaves a lot to be desired but in the process my cell phone fell out of my pocket somewhere in the cut grass. I spent about 30 minutes looking for it and finally found it (Whew!) but it did distract me from doing more with the weeds. And the protector had come off. I wasn't sure what it was protecting me from, but I didn't really want to find out the hard way.


I'm checking all of these hives tomorrow and it will be so much easier without the tall grass and kudzu.



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