Heavenly Honey - Fund Raising

A Day at the Bee Yard

A hive made up of two supers. They sit on a bottom board that has a narrow entrance extending all the way across the width of the super. The bees are gathered at the entrance - some going in with honey and pollen and some coming out to go foraging for some more. Notice the notch in both supers. These are located on all four sides to give the bee keeper a handgrip to lift the super.

A close up of the hive entrance. You can see some bees have landed on the bottom board and are waiting their turn to get into the hive.

Smoking a hive. This equipment ( called a smoker) is used to burn burlap, leaves, wooden shavings, or anything that will produce smoke when the leather bellows are pumped. The smoke quiets the bees down so they are less likely to become angry and are easier to work with.

Examining a bee hive, by removing one of the frames. Note that the upper box (called a super) is smaller that the two supers underneath. This smaller super is called a “shallow super” and is used to produce “honey comb” The two larger supers at the bottom are called deep supers. They are also referred to as the brood chamber since these are used by the Queen bee to lay eggs that develop into bees by going through a larval and a pupal stage. Additional supers are put on top to allow the worker bees to store honey they collect throughout the flowering season.

Inspecting a frame from the brood chamber. The majority of cells are capped and contain “bees-to-be” that will hatch out in a couple of days. Since these do not require attention of the nurse bees, you will notice that they are gathered at the left of the frame attending the eggs and feeding the larvae in the open cells.

Note in the upper left hand corner of the frame a couple of orange cells. This is pollen gathered by the bees as food for the larvae.

A section of a frame showing the worker bees (females) storing honey and pollen. In the middle left of the picture you can see the cells about half filled with honey. Note the dark reddish brown content of 5 cells. This is pollen that the bees are storing to be used in feeding the developing bees.

This photo shows the worker bees attending to the larvae that will develop into young bees. Note the cells at the left of the photo are almost empty. These contain young larvae (2 to 3 days old). The three cells in the middle of the photo with 2 bees facing them are older larvae and the cells in the lower right hand corner have been capped with bees wax since the larvae are now old enough to develop into the next stage - the pupa.