My Husband is a Beekeeper

My husband claims he doesn't have a sweet tooth. However, he seems to be about as eager as anyone to find ways to get sweets from our land. When we finished up our maple sugaring in the spring Marc quickly turned his attention to a bee hive and maintaining our own supply of honey.

In the beginning of June Marc drove out to western Vermont to pick up a nucleus colony of bees (aka a nuc). The nucleus colony includes a queen and a group of honey bees on 5 frames. You move the colony to your hive by putting their frames into your hive with more empty frames and hope they fill it up and make it their own.

When the bees arrived they were living on wooden frames like this. You can see the perfectly built wax honeycomb on the frame.

Marc put those wooden frames into our empty super along with the empty plastic frames we had. He then placed a bucket full of sugar water on top of the frames so the bees would have some food to start building their wax honeycomb. This meant that while they were getting used to the new area and finding flowers they would have a backup food source. He then used an empty super to cover the sugar water bucket and placed a lid on top.

nucleus colony wooden frames and empty plastic frames to expand into

the lower super has the frames, the top super is just covering the sugar water bucket 

Over the past couple of months the bees have not only filled out all the frames on the bottom super with honeycomb wax, eggs, pollen and honey but we have had to add an additional super on top for them to move into. Marc goes out to the colony at least once a week to check on how they are doing and making sure they are happy. If they run out of room or don't have enough food sources they can swarm and leave your hive. 

And here's a closeup of some of the honeycomb wax they have built full of honey. Marc brought it in because they hadn't built it evenly all over the frame. He also wanted to taste some of the raw honey. It was the most flavorful honey I have ever tasted, even if it was only one or two licks of my fingertip.

I have to admit it's been pretty fascinating learning about bees and beekeeping through Marc's eyes. He's so enthusiastic about them and there is so much I didn't know about how the hive functions. We're hoping to get a little honey from the bees this fall. If we are successful at keeping the bees alive over the winter then next fall we should have enough honey for a real harvest.