“Let It Bee, Let It Bee” (Part 1)

It’s good to be back, after 2 weeks of crazy learning experiences and field work. Just like Parky told me, so many moons ago: "Learning is 10% book and class work and 90% field work and actual practice." Boy oh boy Parky, if you could see me now!

So, I performed my first inspection last week and that was a huge learning experience. 1st of all, because our hive top feeders were covered in TONS of mold. Green and furry, black and spotty, it sure knows how to crash a perfectly good party and ruin it upon arrival. I attribute it to the warm weather, the massive amounts of open sugar water, the lack of proper ventilation and the increased amounts of humilty within the hive top feeder. Now, just so we’re all clear as to the specific type of feeder of which I’m speaking, it’s the wooden hive top feeder seen here

The mold was everywhere and I had to do something about it, so I threw out the sugar water and quickly took to my mold killing solutions. I first cleaned every bit of the hive top feeder with water. Then I took my distilled vinegar and my sponge and scrubbed the entirety of the hive and the inner cover until the mold was either no longer visible or non-existent. I then rinsed everything out with fresh water and proceeded to take fresh lemon juice to add a final acidic layer of mold killing goodness. Finally, I added my fresh sugar water, placed the feeder on top of the hive, placed the inner cover and capped it with the outer cover. All after a thorough inspection of the hive.

As for the actual inspection, I performed it frame by frame, with the greatest of care and caution not to sqwash any of the bees in the process. The hives were doing great, with tons of new comb and wax, fresh honey, newly deposited pollen and hundreds of teeny little grains of mini-rice shaped eggs spread throughout the combs and the frames.

Seriously, what a beautiful thing it is to see a new hive, to read about it and then to see it live, in action, right there in front of you. But then again, I guess when you open up the hive for the first time and you see tons of grotty mold starring at you in the face, it’s not quite a beautiful thing, now is it?

Let’s see what all the Buzz is about

Let me backtrack a little bit to give you a history of recent events:

So I went to Miller Bee Supply on Friday and picked up my Queen, so we would’t be “Queenless” in the Russian beehive. Check! Problem solved! I also took the opportunity to buy a couple of quality hivetop feeders so the bees wouldn’t starve at this moment of their grey, little lives (I’ll talk about feeders in my next post)

I went to visit the bees yesterday afternoon to install the queen in her new hive, so I suited up, lit up my smoker and proceeded to open the Russian hive. What an experience! I’d been gone for one day and already the bees had started building comb. I could only wonder what the other hive looked like. It was nuts!

Every infusion of smoke triggered a high pitched agitated buzzing sound from the bees and it worried me for a minute, because I thought it would make them angry and cause them to attack me. But after reading up on the process of smoking bees upon visiting a hive, it turned out to be a normal reaction from the bees.

I first took the ziploc bag of syrup I had filled to feed the bees and it was pretty much already gone. I then created some space between the frames and placed the queen in the hive, candy side poked in and took a few moments to make sure her majesty was out of her cage and into the new hive. I then placed a frame full of bees to surround her from the front and from the back. Here too, I was worried that they would attack the queen, kill her or not accept her, but I guess we’ll have to wait a week to make sure that she’s alive and laying eggs. I then proceeded to install a hivetop feeder on the Russian hive and to fill it up with syrup. I then placed the inner cover on the feeder and the top cover on top of that. My day was done!

So I went back today, because I had yet to install a hivetop feeder on the Italian beehive. What a difference the sun really makes! (I can’t believe I just wrote that obvious fact, but it’s so very true, especially for the bees). Yesterday, it was overcast, cold, rainy, just a day for sleeping and lounging and the bees were no where to be seen except for inside the hive. Today? It was sunny, about 62 degrees, blue skies and just perfect. I didn’t know what to expect from my bees when I got there, but I think this video will show you what I saw when I reached the hives

It was an amazing sight to see! Seriously, if you’ve never seen bees up close like that or have never been a beekeeper, the sight will blow you away! I just had to take this (and another) video and then sit on the bench facing the hives for about 15 minutes just observing the bees, because I had never seen anything like this before in my life: the sight of hundreds of hard working little girls going in and out and flying all over. They were so curious too: I must have had 30 or so plus bees flying on me only to fly away a few seconds after landing on either my arm, my shirt or my pants.

I was in a bit of a predicament, because I didn’t want the Italian bees to starve, but I had to place a feeder on the hive. But at the same time, I did’t want to place some sort of feeder out in the open where any other bees would have access. But you’re also not supposed to disturb a new hive until a week after you set it up, because the bees might kill the queen. I really did not know what choice to make.

Finally, I opted for placing the hivetop feeder very quickly on the Italian hive in order not to disturb the bees. I said a quick little prayer and made what I thought was the best decision. Hopefully, just opening the hive, taking out the ziploc bag and immediately positioning the hivetop feeder won’t cause the bees to kill the queen. I guess only time will tell.

Overall, it was been a very intense experience that has taught me so much about the art of beekeeping in such a short amount of time. Some mistakes were made, some equipment was obtained later than scheduled, but the bottom line is this: we all learn from out mistakes and grow from these learning experiences.

A wise man, who I’ll just call Parky, once told me: “I doesn’t matter how many books you read, how many drills you do or how many exercises you’ve completed on paper. Real learning comes from going through the motions and forcing yourself to do something and to do it again and again . . . Only then will you master what you are trying to learn.” So while reading something like “Beekeeping for Dummies” or “The Backyard Beekeeper” is good, there will come a time when one has to take what one has read and learned and apply that learning by actually going through the motions of an actual beekeeper.

You know, I never told him that he was right, not only about what he was talking about, but about many things in my life. Maybe, when the time comes, I’ll send him a bottle of honey attached with a note saying: “Thanks for teaching me that learning comes from actually doing and not just reading a book.”

I think that would be a sweet gift; but not as sweet as the sight of hundreds of busy little bees!

New Bees for a couple of Newbies

As I posted yesterday, our bees came and the level of excitement went up like a million percent! At times, the bees were quiet; at other times, they were stirring up quite a brouhaha. At one point, I even took a brush and smeared the wire with honey I had sitting in the kitchen cabinet to calm them down. It seemed to work, because they all zapped over to the wire walls and sucked that liquid sweetness up their little straws (i.e. their chewing-lapping mouthpart also known as a proboscis).

I went to bed rather late last night and heard the alarm go off this morning at 5 and I did not want to get up! “‘F’ this, man . . . Forget this, yo!” is the only thing I thought when the alarm buzzed its stirring, but annoying ringing. But I had to get up, if not for work, then for the bees.

I quickly gathered everything and headed to the car and traveled the 40 minutes to my friend’s house way out in the county. I arrived on the scene only to find my friend half-asleep and in his sweats. We instantly got down to business, after the formalities of the morning were exchanged.

We turned on the smoker and thanks to the leaves and the multiplicity of twigs from all the surrounding trees, we able to create some awesomely thick smoke. We prepared the syrup bags, since we were going to pick up our feeders later that night. We then suited up and proceeded to perform the daunting task that lay before us: placing the bees in their respective hives.

Now don’t believe what they say or what you see on YouTube: Opening the box of bees is a real challenge! (Ah, but what’s better than a good ol’ morning challenge to start the day off right, right?) But with some patience and quick and easy maneuvering of the syrup can we were able to open the box of bees and get the queen out of the box. Here’s where the morning ordeal took an interesting turn, and not for the best, I would say.

I opened the queen box, the small little box containing the queen and a couple of her attendants and placed it in the hive. I then grabbed the box of Italian bees and with one big jolt, shook them up and put them in their new home. Bees started flying left, the started swirling right. And as crazy as it seemed, it wasn’t the pandemonium that I expected. They were actually quite calm and gentle. After all the bees were released, we then placed our Ziploc bags of sugar syrup on top and began to wrap things up and move on to our box of Russian bees.

The Russians were a big more trickier and louder as well. Call it an old Soviet grudge, but they actually came out flying and landing on us from the get-go. But with patience and a calm hand, we were able to pull out the queen and start preparing this second hive for its new tenants. But right as we were removing the cork from the thin side of the Russian queen cage, she quickly squeezed her way out and took off like a MiG-29 fighter jet, you know, the ones you can pay and ride over the skies of Moscow. I was dumbfounded! I looked at my friend and said: “There goes your queen, my friend.” His reply: “There she goes . . . flying back to Russia!”

We were both shocked and in awe at what had just transpired: the Russian queen bee had flown away, never to be seen or heard from again. What a tragedy! What a lost to those poor Russian bees! How the hell were were going to fix this undesired and unexpected situation?

I quickly called Geneva Miller and told her that we needed a new queen bee. “Is the Queen dead?” she asked. “No, no . . . she, uh, just, um, flew away?” was my answer/question/response. I didn’t want to lie to the old lady who had helped us out so many times before. Rather, I wanted to be honest and straight with her. So I told her the truth. Luckily, she told me that it happens more often than not and that I should call her this evening to see if they had any spare queens from their shipment.

Call it Karma, call it the Baby Jesus, call it God, Jehovah, Allah, Buddha, Krishna, Mother Mary the Virgin, I called her this evening around 7:30 p.m. and she had good news: they had 4 spare Russian queens and one of them had my name on it. “Pffew! What a relief!” were the only words that came out of my mouth as I got ready and drove over to pick up her second royal highness.

Now, you may ask: “Why are you telling this story?” Well, to be 100% completely honest, I thought I would mention this to save someone out there some time, money and much unwanted stress. Just remember: you want to be working with your candy end, which is most likely, the thick end. Remove the cork found on the thick end and poke a hole through the candied sugar and let the bees so the rest of work. If you are a beginner, don’t even mess with any of these fancy techniques like removing the wire and then pinching the queen onto the comb. Just play it safe and let the bees do their thing.

If you want to see how this is best done, save yourself some and check this video out

My Girls Have Arrived!

I can’t begin to tell you how excited I was today, all day! It started when I received a telephone call at around 10 this morning from Geneva Miller, who “was just calling to let [me] know that [my] bees had arrived safe and sound and that [I could] come pick them up anytime before 8 this evening.” The entire day, I couldn’t wait to finish work and drive to pick up my girls, all 30,000 of them (30,000 since I was also picking up my friend’s order as well)

For starters, I arrived at the Bee Supply and I was soooo anxious and nervous, because I couldn’t wait to see how my bees looked, what they were doing, how they were going to react and what they were going to sound like. I was utterly shocked! No buzz . . . No high-pitched kazoo-like vibrations, NADA! Just a faint and steady hum of almost deafening proportions was all I heard coming from the two little boxes of wire and wood. “I thought bees were supposed to be loud!?” is what I asked the gentleman, Edward, who was helping me carry them to my car. “Well, it actually goes tuh show ya, that bees ur actually vury calm ‘n passive . . . in my 20 years of raisin’ bees, they’ve always bin quiet ‘n docile.”

The drive home was a slow and steady journey, with every bump and pothole causing me to cautiously and worriedly look over at my bees, which were placed in the leg-area of the front passenger seat. I was thinking the worst case scenario with every major car movement (i.e. that all my bees would fall to the bottom of the box after being suspended to each other and the metal can of sugar syrup and cause all sorts of ruckus and agitated commotion within the box), but they turned out to be just fine riding on home with me.

What can I say? I love these little creatures already! And I seriously can’t wait until tomorrow when I will head on over to my friend’s house in the wee hours of the morning, dawn the suit of a beekeeper and together with my friend, introduce them into their new home, along with their respective queens to reign over them in consecrated unity and sweet prosperity!

“Funny How Honey Ain’t Sweet Like Sugar...”

I called my friend J today to catch up with him and I mentioned that I had just returned from picking up my bees (more on than in a minute) and he actually mentioned that he had just opened MSN.com which had a featured article entitled: “Savoring the Sweet Taste of Honey.” I just had to visit the site so I could see for myself

Clicking on the article actually took me to a series of videos and articles on “The Art of Cooking with Honey”: from Honey Baked Ham and Honey Apple Cake to Honey-Roasted Peanuts and Pancakes with Buttered Honey Syrup. Out of the various videos available for you to see, I thought the video about Tupelo Honey was the most entertaining

I just can’t help noticing that a trail of bees and honey seems to be following me everywhere I go. Even today’s blog title comes from Little Wayne’s part on Drake’s new song “The Motto”

Seriously, is it me, or is everything just reminding me of bees these days? I guess the Honey Nut Cheerios on top of my refrigerator aren’t much help, now are they?

Warning! Guard Bees! No Trespassing!

So I was checking out news videos from around the country and I ran across this video from Houston, Texas where an organic vegetable farmer, Gus Nawara, actually got tired of people breaking into his house and stealing his stuff. And apparently, his dogs weren’t doing as good a job as he wanted them to be doing.

What did he do? He decided to get bees . . . Guard Bees, to be exact.

As funny as that may sound, it’s true. Mr. Nawara actually placed a call to a local “Bee Wrangler,” a Miss Jennifer Scott, who actually goes out and captures one to two wild swarms a day and then either sells them, gives them as gifts and sometimes, keeps them. This time, she decided to hand some over to Mr. Nawara who called her asking specifically for “Mean Bees” so he could protect his home with hundreds of teeny little creatures whose stings are worse than their bites.

And what really makes this a viable security option is the fact that Mr. Nawara actually got stung more than 50 times while moving his own lawn!

So let this be a lesson to all those who are reading this entry: Don’t mess with a man and his bees, because they will sting you. Just make sure you notice any posted signs that may be hanging at the entrance. They will most likely look a little like this:

That is, of course, minus the menacing guard dog

The Adventures of Zaina and Nahoul

So I thought it would be cool to see just how much Bees show up within the world of art: you know, pictures, paintings, drawings, logos, designs and mascots. Turns out, Bees are really quite popular in the various art forms I decided to look up.

Eventually, I got to thinking and began to wonder if there was ever a Bee cartoon, one that perhaps I never saw growing up. To my surprise, there actually is! And lucky for me, it was in a language I could understand: Arabic!

I would really be remiss if I didn’t include this clip of “The Adventures of Zaina and Nahoul,” an old Arabic cartoon about a small little bee named Zaina (Arabic for “Full of Beauty and Grace”), her little friend Nahoul and all the trouble they get into.

Apparently there are about 30 episodes to the entire show, each episode lasting a normal 20+ minutes. If you speak and/or understand Arabic, this may bring up some childhood memories. Or if you’re a dedicated learner of the language, these episodes can definitely help you build you listening and vocab skills

Hope you enjoy!

Hello Bold . . . Hello Adorable?

I just finished watching the Season 5 Premiere of MadMen on AMC and this Old Navy ad came on during one of the commercial breaks. Since I did a little work preparing the “Beehive Corner” for the arrival of her royal highness and her 20,000 attendants this Friday, I just had to include this commercial on the blog before the day was over

Come Fun, Come All! I think the look on this beekeeper’s face says it all.

Bees in the Twilight Zone

So I turned the television on today and SyFy network was showing the Twilight Zone, a eerie, but classic show from the late 1950’s and 1960’s which, if you’ve never seen, you’re missing out on some good, well-written television.

They just happened to be showing one of my personal favorite episodes, “Nick of Time” staring William Shatner and Baltimore native Patricia Breslin, who unfortunately passed away last year from pancreatitis.

I never noticed when I had seen the episode before, that the café they were eating and sitting at was actually called the “Busy Bee Café” (Please don’t hate me because of the quality of this picture. I took it with my iPod touch)

It seems that when you become a beekeeper, all these little references to bees, honey and wax just become more noticeable.

If you’re interested in checking out this episode of the Twilight Zone, I’ve made it available by clicking below

Let’s Build A Hive

So my friend calls me up and tells me: “Why don’t we have two hives instead of one? Two times the hives, means two times the bees, means two times the learning and two times the honey! Why not?”

So I placed a call to Jerry Fisher, Vice President of the Maryland State Beekeepers Association and Maryland Department of Agriculture Apiary Inspector one more time to ask specifics about the number of hives one can keep in Baltimore County. He previous had told me about zoning regulations and a 200 feet requirement, for which we built a wall to encircle and enclose the area of my friend’s yard. But this time, Jerry told me that as long as the hives were placed in a closed off area, one could keep as many hives as one desired. For our purposes, two beehives would be sufficient for our purposes. So I called my friend and we headed off to buy some supplies at Miller Bee Supply.

My friend bought all the necessary items and even bought an order of bees. But one thing my friend didn’t know how to do, was how to assemble to hive frames. After all, assembling the hive is a cinch; assembling the beehive frames however, is another story.

But if you’re reading this blog and you’re like my friend who didn’t quite know how to assemble the frames, you’re in luck, because I decided to post instructions and photos on how to assemble the hive frames. Let’s begin, shall we?

Step 1) For each hive you will need 4 pieces of wood, cut in these specific proportions. These will provide the walls of the frame. You can’t see it right now, but the long piece at the bottom of the picture will eventually be the top part of the frame

Here’s a closer look at each individual piece of wood:

These, two wide pieces will provide the walls each frame

This piece is the bottom piece I mentioned earlier, that would in turn, become the top part of each frame. The corner slit you see here will have to be cut from the rest of this piece (more on that later), but right for right now, just notice the slit

This piece is the skinny top piece, which will eventually become the bottom of each frame. Notice the wide groove in the middle of this piece. The actual frame which the bees will use as the foundation for their comb will be lodged in here (more on that in just a minute)

Step #2) Take the bottom piece mentioned in Step #1 (shown here)

Take your knife

Cut the small slit of wood and break it off from the rest of the bigger piece of wood. Keep it off to the side until later. Do not discard this thin piece of wood! It is thin and fragile, and thus, more susceptible to breaking. Keep it out of reach until further notice

Step #3) Now take your four pieces of wood and connect them together. They should all fit and interlock into place. Begin with your bottom piece and lock the two side pieces on both sides

When both are locked into place, the frame should look a little like this

Next, take your top piece and lock it into place on the top of your side pieces. Make sure that the wide groove mentioned in Step #1 is facing inwards, not outwards. In other words, when the frame is assembled, the frame should look just like it does in the picture below (i.e. the groove will be on the inside part of this top piece, not visible if you’re looking at the frame from the top). In the end, your basic frame should look a little like this

Step #4) Nail the frames securely into place

Place each nail in the center of each end, so that each piece is fastened together tightly

Repeat the process for each corner. Make sure that each nail snuggly fastens both pieces of wood. This of course, requires four nails. In the end, you should end up with a tight-fitting wooden frame

Step #5) Take your frame board and fit it into your wooden frame (Some beekeepers like plastic, but I like wired wax boards. Initially, I had decided to go with plastic boards, but some research suggests that wax frame boards are better suited to help the bees when they build their combs and their hive. Feel free to use either plastic or wax)

The wax board should fit perfectly into the grooves of the top frame

Remember I mentioned in Step #3 that the top part should have its groves inwards? If you nail the top part with the middle grove outwards, the wax board will not fit

Another shot of the wax board fitting in as it should: into the groove of the top part

Step #6) After inserting the wax board into place, we have to nail them securely only to the frame, otherwise, the board will wobble and provide an unstable foundation for the bees to build their home. Below is a picture of the wax board looking down at the bottom part from above

Let’s return to Step #2: Remember we took the bottom part, used our knife and cut off a thin portion of wood from off the side? I then told you to keep it off to the side

So take your thin piece of wood

And fasten the wax board (and its wires) to the bottom part of the frame

Then take your tiny nails and attach the thin piece of wood to the bottom part

Be sure to place one nail in the direct center of thin piece of wood. Place another two nails in place, one on the right and another on the left, like so

Step #7) After the wax boards are in place and they have been securely fastened and secured to the frame board, the final step is to balance and further secure the boards to the sides of the wood frame through clasping pins

As seen in Step #1, the sides of the wooden frame have four holes, reserved for four clasping pins. In reality, you will only need to use the two middle holes. These pins should slide right into the holes, but sometimes they will require an extra push

These pins are designed to grab and clasp the wax board and to secure them onto the side pieces, but instead of clasping them into place, what I like to do is to place one pin in front of the wax board and one behind, like so

Here is another shot, from a different angle

The bees will eventually build wax over the clasping pins, so no need to worry about them sticking out or making the frame look awkward. From my experience, it’s better that they hold the frames in place this way, than actually clasping the wax, because sometimes the pins don’t always hold the wax boards straight and often tear the wax boards

Once you have finished following these steps, you have successfully completed building your first frame. Like I mentioned earlier, the top part will eventually become the bottom part of the frame. Of course, this was impossible to really see when the frame was incomplete. However, once completed and placed into the hive body, it becomes clear how the top piece becomes and bottom part of the frame and the bottom piece becomes the top part of the frame.

Once you have completed about 9 or 10 frames, you can call it a day . . . and a hive.

Note on the Bees: I ordered my Bees two weeks and now I’m waiting for them to arrive from Georgia on the 29th of this month. I ordered Italian Bees, but my friend ordered Russian Bees. Apparently, they will eventually cross-breed, but that’s beside the point. Since this is all a big learning experience (one that will be properly documented) and will be having two hives (one Italian, one Russian) it’s going to be an awesome opportunity to see what type of bees are better, not just for their honey, but for growth, production, winter resistance and progress.

Stay tuned! My next post will describe the difference between bees that you may want to order

Spelling Bee or Spelling Been?

Checking in with the local news a few days ago, it was cool to read that Baltimore County third-grader Shaheer Iman spelled the word “Fuselage” to win the seventh annual Baltimore Spelling Bee on March 17 at Towson University. He’s now getting ready for the National Spelling Bee on May 30 and 31 in Washington, D.C. You can find the full article here:

Catonsville third-grader wins Baltimore Spelling Bee

As a new and upcoming Beekeeper, I’m now curious about the “Bee” in “Spelling Bee.” Does it have anything to do with Bees? It has to, right? I mean, why else would they use the bee and the hexagonal combs they so carefully weave as the logos for the Scripps National Spelling Bee? A little research on the etymology of the word “Bee” as found in the term “Spelling Bee,” will actually teach one a thing or two on the common American idiom. The Scripps National Spelling Bee webpage actually has a section on the origin of the expression:

The word bee, as used in spelling bee, is one of those language puzzles that has never been satisfactorily accounted for. A fairly old and widely-used word, it refers to a community social gathering at which friends and neighbors join together in a single activity (sewing, quilting, barn raising, etc.) usually to help one person or family.

The earliest known example in print is a spinning bee, in 1769. Other early occurrences are husking bee (1816), apple bee (1827), and logging bee (1836). Spelling bee is apparently an American term. It first appeared in print in 1875, but it seems certain that the word was used orally for several years before that.

Those who used the word, including most early students of language, assumed that it was the same word as referred to the insect. They thought that this particular meaning had probably been inspired by the obvious similarity between these human gatherings and the industrious, social nature of a beehive. But in recent years scholars have rejected this explanation, suggesting instead that this bee is a completely different word.

One possibility is that it comes from the Middle English word bene, which means “a prayer” or “a favor” (and is related to the more familiar word boon). In England, a dialect form of this word, been or bean, referred to “voluntary help given by neighbors toward the accomplishment of a particular task.” (Webster's Third New International Dictionary).

Bee may simply be a shortened form of been, but no one is entirely certain.

So the next time you have some sort of gathering, don’t hesitate naming the activity a “Bee” of some sort. You might be surprised at what new, original trend you may start without even thinking about it.

International Beekeeping

So I’ve been on YouTube these last few days, checking out all sorts of interesting and informative clips on raising bees, installing a hive for the first time, what’s the best way to not get stung, how to feed bees, etc.

A couple of days ago, a friend mentioned that she was watching a Discovery Channel/National Geographic/Animal Planet special (she didn’t really remember what it was) about a specific tribe in Africa that’s been beekeeping for hundreds of years.

That aroused such an intense curiosity, that I decided to look for this African Bee Tribe on YouTube. What I found was an awesome sight indeed: a group of men in Africa that harvests honey by sticking their bare hands into the hearts of tree trunks, who then grab the wild honeycombs from out of the trees while simultaneously smoking the bees with fires made using the original stick-on-stick rubbing method. It was a feat truly fit for hardcore beekeepers



Here’s another clips I found, that was just AMAZING!



And one final, fascinating clips, this time from Nepal



Enjoy!

“Come, and Let us Build up the Wall”

As I mentioned in a previous post, I’m actually not going to be keeping the bees at my home, because I have no place to keep them. I guess I could keep them on the roof, but I don’t think the apartment management would be too happy with that idea. Instead, a friend agreed to let me use the side yard of his house in Baltimore County to house them. So I went to my local Home Depot on Friday after work to buy some cinderblocks and some wood to create the elevated Beehive stand for our prospective beehive location. It was shortly after I bought the materials and arrived at my friend’s house that I realized the real work was just getting started.

Not only was the side of my friend’s house full of dead leaves and broken branches, but it was filled with building material debris, decayed 2x4 planks of wood, 3 fallen tree logs and tons of rusted over pipes. I spent the first 2 hours of the afternoon clearing every bit of that side-yard down to the very barebones dirt floor. I must say, I hadn’t done yard work in a really long time and I’m a bit sore from the pick-axing, raking and lifting. But it was so well worth it! I cleared an approximate 12-foot by 15-foot rectangle area and now it was time to really start setting up.

I called the Maryland Department of Agriculture Friday morning and spoke to Jerry Fisher, Maryland State Apiary Inspector and Vice President of the Maryland State Beekeepers Association. He informed me that Baltimore County zoning regulations mandate that any beehive be kept at least 200 feet from the boundary of the neighboring property. However, if there exists a wall, of at least four feet in height, surrounding the beehive and the beehive is maintained out of the reach of the general public, the 200 foot zoning regulation becomes void.

So, I cleaned and raked the area one final time and began building the walls of newly established “Beehive Corner” with materials I found in my friend’s yard and garage. I grabbed 4 sheets of expandable metal diamond mesh, took 5 of the iron bars, a sledge hammer, some copper wire, a walk-through steel gate and immediately went to work. I hammered the bars deep into the ground, placed the mesh against the bars, wired them together and completely encircled the “Beehive Corner.” It took about an hour and a half to put the whole shebang together and was waaaaaaay better than paying $800 plus labor costs to some guy I know who owns a general construction company. My friend actually had a metal table which I decided to use as the stand for the hive, since it would most likely provide the sturdiest foundation for the hive. I still decided to use the cinder blocks and the wood as a stand for the water source we will be providing the bees. I need to head to Michael’s sometime this week to buy a couple of pieces of styrofoam to act as floaters for the water in the buckets so that the bees don’t drown. Later this week, my friend and I are also going to head back to Home Depot to buy some mulch so that the area’s floor doesn’t remain so bare. That, and some ground cinnamon to sprinkle the area immediately surrounding the hive to drive the ants away (Apparently, ants are repelled and driven away by the scent of cinnamon)

I must say, I’m pretty proud of myself and my work on a Sunday afternoon. I guess you never know what you’re capable of doing until you actually do it. And now I have the bees to thank.

Thank you ladies!

Beekeeping for Dummies

So, you should probably know that I am a Rookie Beekeeper, a Newbie, as the gentleman from the Maryland State Beekeepers Association (MSBA) called me yesterday when I spoke to him over the telephone. That being said, I need a lot of help.

No worries, because asking around, reading what others have posted online, talking to several experienced beekeepers in the area and making a few phone calls really helps. But I must say, if there has been one thing that has really helped me through this time of honest preparation to start beekeeping, it

’

s been a book called

“

Beekeeping for Dummies.

”

At first, I was going to buy it on Amazon.com for $12, but then I

checked on my local library and realized that they had 3 copies available for check-out, so I went ahead and saved myself $12.

After reading the first 10 chapters, I had so many questions which in turn, lead me to so many good, solid and positive answers online and through simple conversations with other beekeepers. If you are really interested, get yourself a copy of this book today! Buy it, borrow it, download it on your e-reader, just find this book. You will be glad you did. First of all, it comes to you with the assumption that you know nothing about beekeeping

(which is true) a

nd guides you through everything you need to buy, the times and seasons of beekeeping, what to do when you introduce your queen, your bees, when the weather changes, how to keep your hive strong and health. Pretty much, it provides you with a crash-course in beekeeping and gives awesome suggestions of what to do in any given situation.

I

’

ve looked at several other books these last 3 weeks and I can honestly say that this book provides the best introduction for the price. Try this book out for yourself and come back and tell me that it didn

’

t provide many good and sound insights into beekeeping. As for me, I

’

m going to give this book a 10; but like Levar Burton used to say in that old show Reading Rainbow:

“

you don't have to take my word for it.

”

It

’

s funny, because as a kid, the Reading Rainbow episode when Levar talked about Bees was one of my favorite episodes as a child. If you

’

re interested, you can see the episode here:

Note: I just got back from ordering my first Queen and package of Italian bees. My girls should be arriving from Georgia on March 29th and I’ll be picking them up on March 30th.

Stayed tuned . . .