Honey Bees

Back in January while I was at the farm show, they had a honey demonstration that I attended. They talked all about the bees and the honey itself. It was very informative, at the end of the demonstration they handed out a brochure for a beekeeping class. I took one and went to it.

There were actually two classes one was theory and the other practical. Held on the first and second Saturday of this month. The class was so thorough  that you needed to take a day or two, too relax and review the material.

This class was held by the Capital Area Beekeepers Association from the greater Harrisburg area. The first day we was all book work covering everything from birth to death, diseases, equipment, honey extraction, marketing, bee management and professional pollination.

The professional pollination for lack of a better term is when you take your bees to a farm or orchard so they can pollinate the farmers crops. The bees are rented by the farmer and the honey that is collected is the bee keepers. There are some exceptions to this and they vary from farm to farm and beekeeper to beekeeper.

This past Saturday was the practical work where we got too go to an apiary, open the hive and check out the bees. The hives we opened where healthy with very little problems. A lot of queen cells, which means the hives are rearing new queens most likely to swarm. So to stop that from happening we made splits out of those hives and started two more hives.

All in all it was a fun, exciting two weekends. Where a lot was learned and some time to save up to acquire the supplies for next years honey bees.