Robbing Peter to Pay Paul and the Taste of Honey

The front hive at Tom's house is desperately queenless, so on Thursday I went over to Stonehurst Place to steal a frame of brood and eggs from one of the deep boxes over there.  The new Ray Civitts hive was looking good and needed a new box.  I checkerboarded them top box into the new box and then went into the lower box.

I put the beautiful frame of mostly eggs and young brood into a pillow case and put it in the back of my warm car (it was 87 in Atlanta that day).  I drove to Jeff's office and picked him up to go to Tom's.  We opened the hive.  

Inside the hive, the frames had some brood but it was all drone.  I think after the swarm the queen must have either been short bred (a Keith Fielder term meaning that she only mated with a couple of drones - not enough to allow her to function as a good layer).  Anyway we pulled a frame from the bottom box that had a baseball sized circle of drone brood in the center.  The rest of the frame had all the worker cells back-filled with nectar and there was honey at the corners, as is typical in a brood frame.  

We added the beautiful Stonehurst brood/egg frame to the hive.  I am crossing my fingers that they will now be able to make a successful queen.  

Jeff and I couldn't resist sticking our finger hive tool into the corner of the frame to taste the honey.  Yum - it had a sweetness followed by a spicy end note - delicious.  We didn't have anywhere else to put the frame, so I put it in the back of the car to take home.

I let Jeff out at his office and he went in to tell the staff that we had a taste of honey in the car.  At least six people came running out of the building brandishing spoons!  I didn't get the camera up and running fast enough.  

All six of them had a taste.  Jeff works at a casting agency and they know how to have fun!  All of them enjoyed the honey adventure, I think.  And I had a great time sharing our honey moment with them as well.

Working with the Girl Scouts

On Monday it was really hot in Atlanta - my car said 81 degrees when I got into it at 6:30 PM to go to talk to a group of Girl Scouts. This troop was presenting a "Try-It" to their service unit. The idea was to introduce Brownies and Junior Girl Scouts to the idea of beekeeping and to teach them some about the purpose of bees in the world.

I had to work all day and planned to leave straight from my office to get to the meeting to talk to the girls at 7:15. So I took all of my "props" with me - frames of honeycomb, wax comb with eggs in it, homemade hand cream and lip balm, photos, my bee hat and veil. I opened the back of my car at 6:30 to find that my car had been like a solar wax melter, melting the honeycomb off of the frame. Thank goodness it fell onto a ziploc baggie containing other stuff and didn't ruin my photographs!

I brought honey for the girls to taste. I spoke to a large group of Junior Scouts. These girls are Brownie Scouts. They were a little cautious about trying the honey until they actually tasted it. Yum!

You can see on the table some of the items the girls worked on - they had drawings of a bee to teach the girls the anatomy of the bee, they did some geography (had a contest to see who could figure out the most states with the bee as their state insect!), and they played some games with the girls. I certainly enjoyed my part.


I am mentoring this Girl Scout troop as they begin their own beekeeping. They ordered a nuc of bees which arrived this past weekend. On Sunday I will meet with them to help them do their first hive inspection. If the way they conducted this "Try It" is an indicator of the job they will do with their bees, they will be quite successful at the task!

Talk at Henderson Mill Elementary School

Today I visited Henderson Mill Elementary School in DeKalb County to talk to their 5th grade garden club about bees. I had a great time. The students took me on a tour of the two large garden areas that they manage with their teacher who is a Master Gardener. They wanted to learn how bees and beehives work. I talked to them all about bees and then let them taste some of my honey. Here they are with popsicle stick tasters, sampling the honey.
They also explored the comb in frames that I brought. The comb was in various stages of being made - I had some partially filled frames. The kids at this table are looking at a frame in which the bees had just started to store honey at the end of the nectar flow.

To get ready for this talk, I found two marvelous children's books on bees and beekeeping:
The Life and Times of the Honeybee by Charles Micucci
and
The Honey Makers by Gail Gibbons

Both of these books are well-illustrated and give simple reasonable explanations about life in the beehive.

I did wish that I had large pictures of the worker bee, the queen bee and the drone. I also wanted a picture of bees with pollen baskets full that was large. I have some good photos that I have taken, but they are not large (poster like) so I'm going to look at the bee supply companies for some resources.

I had a great time at Henderson - I hope I get more opportunities to speak about the bees - it's always fun.!

More from the History Center

The kids who came to the talk (see previous post below) were interested as much in the wax as in the honey that I had for them to taste. This young man wanted to smell the wax block. I can understand how he feels - the smell is heavenly and it is as if you are standing in between the hives on a warm day to smell a wax block.

Everyone was interested in the chunk honey so I opened the jar so they could taste it with popsicle sticks.

For the last of my three talks, my sweet angel grandson showed up to help me. I am holding him and answering questions in the last picture!