Little Tikes Bee Water Cooler

Aksel left a plastic toy car out in the rain today. Once it cleared up a bit, the bees were out looking for water to drink. The word must have spread through the hive that the little car was the place to be this afternoon -- there was a steady stream of bees drinking from the shallow pools of collected water.

Urban Beekeeping on WAMU's The Animal House

Toni Burnham, a Washington, DC urban beekeeper, and Aron Weber, pastry chef at the Fairmont Hotel were interviewed on The Animal House program on Washington's NPR station. The Fairmont Hotel is the DC hotel that has three hives on its roof and hosted a spinning party for local beekeepers last summer.

It's a great interview. Give it a listen. Urban Beekeeping

Hill Rag

The Hill Rag, a local Capitol Hill newspaper, recently printed an article on urban beekeeping. I might know that guy named "Kurt."

NPR on the Beekeeping Trend

NPR has an article on the urban beekeeping trend. Seems like a lot of new beekeepers are women. I don't claim to be a beekeeper -- that's all Karl -- but I share a house with them. That certainly makes them "our" bees, right?

First Jar of Honey

Another Bee Video

Karl had to replace the screen cover of the hive this past weekend as too many bees were still escaping on to the porch. The kids and I are out of town so he had a bit more time on his hands, and he made a video of the process. As he says, if you have nothing else to do but watch paint dry, you might enjoy it. He did post it on the local new beekeepers listserv and got some nice comments. He also got some unsolicited advice on the several things a more experienced beekeeper thought he was doing wrong!

Tour of the Front Porch

Around 6 pm last night, Karl attached a Flip video camera to a fishing pole to shoot this video of our bees hanging out on the second story front porch. Thankfully, the bees don't hang out like that all day. I know it's harmless, but I just don't like to walk under a pile of bees.

Earlier in the day, Karl built a screen top to replace the original wooden one. The screen will allow fresh air to get into the hive more easily and hopefully will keep it a bit cooler. We aren't buying the bee air conditioning unit yet. He also built a feeder into the new lid. A quart mason jar with pinholes punched into it will sit upside down into the hive. Bees then can lick the lid to drink the mixture of 1:1 sugar water. Hopefully feeding the bees this way will help them keep the hive cool while encouraging them to build comb.





When Karl took the hive apart to check thing out, the super on top of the queen excluder is a large one and was full of bees and honey. Karl estimates the whole super weighed over 120 lbs. Here it is on floor.
















Bees had built comb on top of the queen excluder so he scraped that off and put it aside. The kids were able to taste honey that was left on that comb. They loved it!








Finally, we didn't see the queen, but we did see a lot of larvae in the second super just under the queen excluder. There is plenty of room for a lot more bees in that super.

A Hive on a Porch

It's about time I posted pictures of the hive. We live in a city in a row house that has a second floor sleeping porch. The porch is on the south side of the house and runs the length of our back room -- it's about 5 feet wide by 20 feet long.

Karl placed the hive on a stand on the far end of the porch. There is a slit through the exterior wall through which a little tunnel built on the landing platform allows bees to go in and out.








The following picture is of Karl installing the nuc into the hive on May 1st.


After just a week, Karl opened the hive to make sure the queen was there and all was well. The bees already had made quite a bit of honey. You can see where the honey is already capped.



Can you spot the queen? It's sort of like a Where's Waldo book.