The Bee Man

My husband has taken up a new hobby: beekeeping. This past April 23rd was the big day where he picked up his first colony of bees to bring home to the hive. There were over 10,000 of them locked in a wooden bee box. The queen was inside an itty bitty cage within the bee box because she carries the pheromones that attract all the other bees and make them stay together.
I don't know much about beekeeping, but have learned so much from watching my husband these past weeks.
He is a dedicated, careful beekeeper who is taking pride in his hives.
He built these beehive condos from scratch following a pattern he researched online. He has been teaching our children (and their friends) all about the inner workings of beehives and the honey-making process. It is fascinating!

Here he is placing the wooden bars in the hive. This is where the honeycombs will hang down.

Here is the bee box full of 10.000 + bees that Micah picked up from the bee seller:

 Here is Micah extracting the queen from the box of bees.

The Queen bee in her little cage.

Here he is dumping the swarm into their new home. The Queen will stay in her little cage until she eats her way out. Micah stopped up the exit with a marshmallow.

This is on Day 8. Micah went to go check on the bees and found that they had made combs.

 

This is Day 11. The bees have been busily making many combs in the hive. Jonah and his friend were excited to see so many bees!

 

 This is really fun for our family! I'm excited for when Micah will begin stealing harvesting the honey from the honeycombs. We will soon have all the local, delicious, honey of our dreams. Mmmmmmm

**Several years ago I purchased a children's book called The Bee Man which talks all about the process of harvesting honey from bees. We've been reading it to our kids all this time as a favorite bedtime story, but I never thought we'd have a Bee Man of our very own!