Thursday, July 29, 2010

Bringing Home the Bees: Hive 5

Mark is taking some equipment to a work site tonight so he can come back through Macon and pick up Hive 5. If Hive 4 hadn't gone so easily (details in a future post), these bees would have been at Prairie Blossom Bee Farm first.

Hive 5 is the first colony of bees mark has moved from their established home inside a building. Remember when I wrote about Hive 1 and said the owner of the hardware store had two hives at his camp house? He actually had 3 colonies, but one was in a tree by the road, and Mark felt it would be dangerous to attempt to remove them. So that left bees in the old dairy barn, and bees in the old house. Hive 5 is the dairy barn bees.

And boy, were they a challenge. Mark had to build his platform up high, as they were going through a hole at the top of the board. Once he got the screen cone and the bee box in place, complete with sugar water sprayed in it to attract the bees, they started going in a hole at the bottom of the board. Realizing there were too many holes in the board, he decided to return another day to tear out the board and just start moving comb and bees. This process has taken weeks, with trips to Macon to feed them, check the old hive area, put in the moving screen, etc.

At long last, he's bringing them home tonight. Welcome to the farm, Hive 5!

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