Last week EHS 130 came to the apiary for a visit. 

They saw the hives in the apiary...

checked out a frame full of honey...

and got a lesson in tasting the bees most precious product!

It's the time of year when we remove frames to extract the honey. These frames were all removed and prepared for honey removal!

ESH 2nd grade room 231 visits the bees!

Students from Ms. Marinho and Mrs. Bissonette's class visited the apiary today to see what the bees were up to. It's the end of summer and they are busy tending their stored honey and thinking about the coming winter.

We had a chance to pull a frame out of the hive and examine the bees at work.

The telltale honeycomb isn't readily seen here because the bees have sealed over each cell with wax - permanent storage!

A sample of empty honeycomb for passing and 'testing'.

A little tasty distraction of some of the garden's mint.

And of course a little honeycomb squishing....

followed by a tentative taste...

that's good!!

Stay tuned for honey extraction!

SPRING SWARM!

One of our hives has been so successful that they produced a new queen and she left the hive in search of her new home, taking a few thousand workers with her.

She stopped for a quick rest int he magnolia tree in the garden...

Dr. Calleri happened to be able to provide them an empty hive to move into... the hard part was getting them in there. In this video, you can see some of the bees doing their "wiggle" dance to tell the others where they think they found a good place to live. 

We had to convince them that our hive was better then any other spots they might have found, so Dr. Calleri took action. Donning a bee suit and climbing up a tall ladder, he clipped off the branches that the bees were hanging on, and moved the whole ball into our empty hive boxes, trapping them inside with the exits blocked. Soon the queen's pheromones will make the new hive "smell" like home and we will be able to open up the entrances so they can come and go as they wish.