It's been an interesting couple weeks of learning from our newest addition to Resilience Urban Farm, Italian honeybees, a subspecies of the western honeybee, Apis mellifera. These bees are a gentle variety, and from what I can tell, they are determined workers who pretty much ignore humans in order to get their work done. We got our first hive as a kit that came with a hive and its various parts, protective head gear, gloves, a smoker & pellets, an excellent book and some beekeeping tools. Our bees came in a little cage. The queen came in an even smaller cage. I've read that a three pound package like the one we bought can contain between 10,000 and 12,000 bees!
After handling the bee cage and getting them into the hive - literally pouring them in in a stream of clustered honeybees - and then spending a few days observing them, any apprehension my wife and I had about keeping them in our yard dissolved.
Another huge benefit of having the bees is that it has inspired our children. They are learning about the cycles and designs that our Creator has written into nature, the importance of pollinators and why each part of the ecosystem is important.
When we got the bees, my son started checking out books at the library about bees and before long, he was correcting me when I misspoke a fact about the bees. The children have been creating bee-centric art since we got the bees.
We put the hive on top of bricks which are then on top of a pallet. This is to keep the hive off of the ground and free from anything blocking its entrance.
In about 5 weeks from getting the hive, we'll add a super, or another level above the foundation that will be inaccessible to the queen but open for the workers to build new honeycombs. From here we'll be able to enjoy the sweetest part of beekeeping - fresh, raw, as-local-as-you-can-get honey.
