Adventures in Beekeeping

Fresh Honeycomb

One of the first activities I participated in as an intern was harvesting honey from the beehive.  There's a hive onsite that was previously managed by the interns of 2010; though, they left 2 seasons ago, so the hive has been untouched for quite a while.  It was time to take a peek and see how the bees were fairing and what kind of honey they produced.

Brandon, David and I were joined by Kirin, a former intern and expert beekeeper, who showed us how to open, handle and clean a hive. To my surprise, we found very few bees inside.  They had all left the hive and what remained was 6 months worth of honey-filled honeycomb.  We harvested the honey and were able to gather almost 10 pounds of it.  Delish!

Cleaning the Hive

We also noticed that some of the honey was unusable; turns out, an "invader" entered the hive and contaminated it, forcing the bees to vacate.  In order to prepare the hive for a new bunch of bees, we had to sterilize it.  To do this, we pulled out all of the individual slots, cleaned them (scrapped 'em and harvested what we could - making sure of course to leave some honey for the bees). We then used a blow torch along the edges of the slots and hive to kill any remaining bacteria or bugs. (This was after I harvested some of the amazing propolis they produced.) Once this was complete, we just had to wait to find a new swarm.  If only it was that easy ...

Bee Swarm

Lucky, it was!  During break from a solar training class, Vaughn happened to see a swarm of bees on a branch of a tree.  He acted fast - as you must in this situation.  When you see a swarm of bees like that, it means they are are homeless and currently looking for a home.  You can turn your back for just a few minutes and find the swarm gone!  So, Vaughn and a few others quickly gathered a box and a scissors.  They carefully placed the box beneith the swarm, clipping the branch and gently lowering the swarm inside.  The box was then transported back to SLI and the new swarm was introduced to the clean hive.  We crossed our fingers hoping they would take. 

Smoking The Bees (keeps them docile)

And take they did.  Just the other day, Brandon grabbed the smoker and David donned the beekeeping gear, and they dared to open the hive to see what was going on.  Everything looked great - here are some pics of their adventure and you can also check out the a video of them opening the hive.

Brandon & David Gearing Up

Bee-utiful!