Tuesday, August 18, 2009
Trip to Minn., Part 3 - Bees
My brother's bee hives are visible on the drive in from the road, and I was curious to face down my fear of bees and go visit them -- suitably attired, of course:
So we got on our white jumpsuits, elbow-length gloves, and heavy boots.
Looking good!
It looked -- and felt -- like being in a nature documentary: "The researchers cautiously approach the hive..."
Under a hard metal lid there's one or more short boxes, called supers.
The supers contain vertical frames to support sheets of plastic upon which the bees sculpt wax and lay eggs or store up honey
Under the lowest super, there are two taller box. Inside one of these, the queen is kept from entering the super by a metal grate:
The bees don't much like being disturbed, but puffing smoke onto them makes them quiet down as they scoot way to avoid it. The smoker is just a hollow can filled with something that burns slowly.
Here the picture is a little blurred by our host's haste to rather hurriedly keep things quiet:
I used to see stuff like this in my nightmares:
He's cool as a cucumber, despite the bee that's clearly viible right on his face:
So we got on our white jumpsuits, elbow-length gloves, and heavy boots.
Looking good!
It looked -- and felt -- like being in a nature documentary: "The researchers cautiously approach the hive..."
Under a hard metal lid there's one or more short boxes, called supers.
The supers contain vertical frames to support sheets of plastic upon which the bees sculpt wax and lay eggs or store up honey
Under the lowest super, there are two taller box. Inside one of these, the queen is kept from entering the super by a metal grate:
The bees don't much like being disturbed, but puffing smoke onto them makes them quiet down as they scoot way to avoid it. The smoker is just a hollow can filled with something that burns slowly.
Here the picture is a little blurred by our host's haste to rather hurriedly keep things quiet:
I used to see stuff like this in my nightmares:
He's cool as a cucumber, despite the bee that's clearly viible right on his face:
