Victor and Olivia left Noah with Grandma and Grandpa and headed out to San Francisco for a class on beekeeping.
Products made from the bees we visited.
Gotta get dressed in the fancy bee suits!
The whole crew.
The bees seal the openings to the hive with a substance called propolis. We had to scrape it off as part of the routine care of the hive so the trays with honey could be accessed.
This bee stung Olivia. You can see the stinger just to the left of the bee. She hadn't been stung yet at this point. About 5 minutes later she bumped her hand against the inside of the glove and stung herself!
This is a tray filling with honey. Each of the white covered cells is full of honey.
When they're full of honey like this, they are super heavy!
This is a tray of baby bees. Male bees to be exact. It's complex, but there was some sort of parasite attacking the hive, so the beekeeper put in an empty frame. The other frames you've seen so far have a starter plastic insert. The inserts have a smaller gauge opening for each cell which encourages honey cells and female larva cells. If you give the bees an open frame, they tend to make larger gauge cells where boys are more likely to be laid. Boys don't do much in bee society, so the beekeeper was using them as a sacrifice to the parasite.
How do you make lavender honey when you don't have a lot of lavender growing nearby? Put a tray of lavender in your beehive of course!
Before we left, we sampled the bee products including bee pollen.
Victor's convinced that he wants a beehive now and Olivia agrees that it would be a fun hobby, but we have to see what the homeowner's association would think about this!
Someone was tired.
