Tuesday, December 27, 2011

Bees

For the past two weeks some very busy bees have been building this hive onto a branch of the silver birch tree just outside our living room.

The wonderful Lyn and her Pat from the Canberra Beekeepers Association came early this morning to remove the hive and transfer the bees to a safer location away from little kids and pets.

It was a fascinating process to watch. First they used some brilliant DIY gear to remove the hive from the branch........


......then transferred each layer of honeycomb to its new home. Lyn examined each piece really closely - checking to see where the Queen Bee was, apparently. Look at her doing this with her bare hands!


The bees got a bit feisty after a while so they set up a smoker to calm them down. There were at least four chunky layers of honeycomb in our hive.


The Queen Bee sighting proved to be elusive however.



Lyn says there is no honey in our hive...but it was full of pollen, for all the baby bees. She thinks it's Grevillea Robusta (Silky Oak) flower pollen - very yellow.


The new home for the hive will sit under the tree for 24 hours to collect any remaining bees that may have missed out on the move. Lyn and Pat will then collect the hive and take it to its new location.


Although it was a fascinating process to watch both Rob and I got caught out 3/4 of the way through - lost our focus a bit and both of us ended up being stung. I got stung on the face and Rob got stung on the back of the neck. I had forgotten how much a bee sting hurts - especially on the face. And to make it worse the bee got stuck in my hair so it was a horrible few minutes until I was sure it was gone.

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