(no subject)
May. 11th, 2006 11:39 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
helen99We attended the Beekeepers meeting last night at Brookside Gardens Nature Center. We're exploring the possibility of having a hive or at least having access to a hive, and possibly extracting our own honey, because ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
rialian wants to get an entire meadmaking cycle going so he'll know what goes into the mead. The main attraction for me was an observation hive located in the meeting room, which has a bee-sized exit to the grounds of Brookside Gardens. I saw two types of comb in the hive: the honey storage section and the nursery section. Each section was a different color. The nursery was grey (and I'm told it turns black as it ages), and the honey section was gold. I saw some bees dancing and tried to determine from the dance which way the nectar source might be (if that's indeed what they're saying -- we assume a lot with insects since we can't ask them). I couldn't understand a word...
I saw some workers polishing empty cells or feeding babies or applying wax caps (hard to see what they were doing since all I saw were their butts protruding from cells as they worked inside). I saw bees up in the honey section dehydrating the nectar into honey. Then I saw this large bee with a white dot painted on her - She wasn't that much larger than the rest of them - just a little longer. This was obviously the queen, and she was busy laying eggs in empty cells...
The rest of the meeting went well - everyone went crazy forrialian's mead (we brought a metheglin and a melomel) and asked for a workshop. You could tell they were total master geeks - they showed us an example of a hive with 10 frames, methods of making the bees go to the nursery while you're trying to take the honeycomb out, how to shear the caps off the honeycomb with a heat-knife, two kinds of (huge) extractor devices, and how to strain the honey so it doesn't have wax, lint, or other impurities in it, and finally, the best way to package it for selling at fairs and farmers markets and such. They also talked about queens and how to treat them so they won't stop laying eggs, and how long you can keep a queen out of a hive before she gives up and goes sterile, and how long she can survive without attendants, and such. Some of the lecture sounded a little too impersonal to me. You could tell they loved their bees, but ... at the same time it felt like they were being thought of more as commodities than as part of a spiritual process. There were a few there who were actually bee-touched though (you could tell). I'll have to look in to this more..
For example, they talked about using a product called "Bee-Gone" to get the bees out of the honeycomb. This stuff purportedly smells really awful, though. Even if it didn't, if the bees don't like it, chances are I shouldn't like it either.
Another thing I noticed was that nowhere in the discussion or in the catalogs they were handing out did I see any mention of metarhizium anisopliae, which purportedly is a good shield against Varoa mites. Any mention of Varoa treatments were of the chemical variety. They did, however, tell us how to test for the mites, which is useful.
Beekeeping could be something could I get interested in, even ifrialian decides not to. I really did like staring at those bees. I think I could learn the bee dance eventually, and maybe even figure out what they were saying. Then I'll ask politely if I can have some honey (maybe I can ask them to make extra for me).
rialian wants to get an entire meadmaking cycle going so he'll know what goes into the mead. The main attraction for me was an observation hive located in the meeting room, which has a bee-sized exit to the grounds of Brookside Gardens. I saw two types of comb in the hive: the honey storage section and the nursery section. Each section was a different color. The nursery was grey (and I'm told it turns black as it ages), and the honey section was gold. I saw some bees dancing and tried to determine from the dance which way the nectar source might be (if that's indeed what they're saying -- we assume a lot with insects since we can't ask them). I couldn't understand a word...I saw some workers polishing empty cells or feeding babies or applying wax caps (hard to see what they were doing since all I saw were their butts protruding from cells as they worked inside). I saw bees up in the honey section dehydrating the nectar into honey. Then I saw this large bee with a white dot painted on her - She wasn't that much larger than the rest of them - just a little longer. This was obviously the queen, and she was busy laying eggs in empty cells...
The rest of the meeting went well - everyone went crazy for
rialian's mead (we brought a metheglin and a melomel) and asked for a workshop. You could tell they were total master geeks - they showed us an example of a hive with 10 frames, methods of making the bees go to the nursery while you're trying to take the honeycomb out, how to shear the caps off the honeycomb with a heat-knife, two kinds of (huge) extractor devices, and how to strain the honey so it doesn't have wax, lint, or other impurities in it, and finally, the best way to package it for selling at fairs and farmers markets and such. They also talked about queens and how to treat them so they won't stop laying eggs, and how long you can keep a queen out of a hive before she gives up and goes sterile, and how long she can survive without attendants, and such. Some of the lecture sounded a little too impersonal to me. You could tell they loved their bees, but ... at the same time it felt like they were being thought of more as commodities than as part of a spiritual process. There were a few there who were actually bee-touched though (you could tell). I'll have to look in to this more.. For example, they talked about using a product called "Bee-Gone" to get the bees out of the honeycomb. This stuff purportedly smells really awful, though. Even if it didn't, if the bees don't like it, chances are I shouldn't like it either.
Another thing I noticed was that nowhere in the discussion or in the catalogs they were handing out did I see any mention of metarhizium anisopliae, which purportedly is a good shield against Varoa mites. Any mention of Varoa treatments were of the chemical variety. They did, however, tell us how to test for the mites, which is useful.
Beekeeping could be something could I get interested in, even if
rialian decides not to. I really did like staring at those bees. I think I could learn the bee dance eventually, and maybe even figure out what they were saying. Then I'll ask politely if I can have some honey (maybe I can ask them to make extra for me).![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-12 03:16 pm (UTC)http://helen99.livejournal.com/227718.html
and go to
One of the people who spoke said that he kept a beehive while living in an apartment. I guess he had constructed some kind of exit for them, but I can't imagine how he must have done it since he didn't own the place. I'm sure it's not common, but that proves it can be done...
(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-12 03:42 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-12 03:43 pm (UTC)