Bee-utiful Day

This month I hung out with members of the Nebraska Bee Keepers Association for a day at one of their learning meetings. One of the members, Bill, has a rental in which bees took up residence in a house wall. We were there to learn how to extract the hive and safely give it a new home in an empty hive box. His place is a farm, south of Lincoln about 1.5 hours. It was a perfect day, slightly overcast and not too hot with a gentle breeze blowing, no city noises and the sound of the Western Meadowlark and occasional Pheasant for background music. I enjoyed seeing how the bee fashion changed since I helped my dad with bees as a kid.

I didn't feel comfortable with just a mesh covering my arms like this woman wore. I made sure my skin was covered!

In the United States, the traditional type of hive is the box hive. At Bill's place we first looked at a couple other types of hives, the Horizontal Hive and the Kenyan Hive. They both are very similar except the Kenyan hive is a v-shaped horizontal hive. Anyway, that's my amature view of it. Bill had placed a window in the side of the Kenyan hive so we could see the very cool workings of the honeybees inside. I've also included an inside look when they opened the top of the Kenyan hive.

I'll add more photos later